


wax poetic

by atswimtwobros



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Dick Pics, Escalation, M/M, Waxing, Wikihow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:53:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22949341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atswimtwobros/pseuds/atswimtwobros
Summary: Working title: The Waxening.If Travis were paranoid, he might think Patty was trying to kill him.
Relationships: Travis Konecny/Nolan Patrick
Comments: 353
Kudos: 926





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was on an every Friday schedule but I'm thinking the final 2 chapters will be every two weeks. I'm doing the Flyers Fic Exchange (exciting!) and my coursework is ramping up, so I'm going to give myself more time for those things. 
> 
> If you have any questions or complaints, I am on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/atswimtwobros) and [Tumblr](https://atswimtwobros.tumblr.com).
> 
> Thank you as always to [jolach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolach/pseuds/jolach) for the hand-holding.
> 
> Title from the Bloodhound Gang classic "Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo"
>
>> If I get you in the loop  
When I make a point to be straight with you then  
In lieu of the innuendo, in the end, know my intent, though  
I Brazilian wax poetic, so pathetically:  
I don't wanna beat around the bush.  


The water’s perfect. Not too still, not too hot. A nice breeze over the surface to keep the sun bearable. Travis wants to stick his feet in, but even more than that he wants the huge catfish he knows with a dreamer’s certainty is seconds away from biting, just a breath out of reach; all he needs to do is give it time. 

Something buzzes by his head, loud as shit, and Travis groans, flinging a hand out to slap at his phone on the nightstand. He wants to be back on that lake, ass-deep in Corona and shiny little lures he made himself. Everything else can wait until daylight. 

Except the damn thing starts vibrating again the second he turns over to go back to sleep. The shock of it being Patty’s face on the screen is enough to get him upright, flicking the lamp on as he answers the call.

“Are your fingers broken?” Travis asks immediately, because he can't imagine anything else that'd get Patty to call instead of just texting, then his brain catches up with the possible severity of the situation and he adds, “Wait, shit, are you okay?”

The line is quiet for a beat, just long enough for Travis to start getting really, actually worried, before Patty says, “You can text with Siri, grandpa.”

Travis mentally waves that aside. “Dude, it's—” he checks the screen and winces, “_two _in the morning, what's up?”

Patty just breathes at him for a few seconds, not sounding particularly distressed, but then he says, “Can you come help me with something?” and Travis is on high alert again.

“At two in the morning,” he clarifies, and then, remembering an even more important facet of this request, “Where are you? Where's Kev?” Travis is already up and pulling on a pair of sweats, but he'd like to know what he's getting into.

“I don't know, in his room probably.”

“Bud, if I'm driving all the way to Kev’s place at ass o’clock, you could at least give me some details.”

“So you're coming?” Patty asks, and screw him because he must be able to hear the sound of Travis’ keys jangling as he locks the apartment door behind him. 

“_Yes, _ Pat, I am getting in my car now at—” 2:15 am, fuck, “_2:15 am, fuck, _Patty, but yeah, I'm coming.”

Patty just says, “Awesome,” and hangs up. Travis spends the whole drive counting down how many hours of sleep he will _ not _be getting before practice in the morning. Fuck.

* * *

Travis could be a real jackass and lay on the doorbell, but Kev didn't cryptically wake him up in the middle of the night for secret illuminati reasons. Instead, he pulls out his phone when he gets to the front door and texts Patty _ here. _

** _Patty: _ **

_ key under mat _

_ in my room _

_ dont wake up kev _

Which is _ insane, _ and Patty _ will _be hearing Travis’ opinions about home security A-fucking-S-A-P, but Travis lets himself in and heads for the stairs, sparing a glance for the light spilling out from under the door to Kev’s master suite. Patty’s door is cracked and there's soft lamplight visible through the gap, cementing Travis’ feeling that he's awake right now for no good reason. Still, he lets himself in, prepared to launch into a laundry list of complaints, but Patty’s standing in the middle of the floor, waiting with his arms crossed. 

“_Dude,_” Travis starts anyway, shutting the door behind him in case he gets too loud, “Kev’s still _ awake_. Did you even _ try _to ask him or—”

“I can't,” Patty grumbles, and there are already red splotches on his cheeks he usually needs a few cameras in his face to work up to.

“Alright,” Travis stands a few feet in front of him, unsure what the play is because he doesn't even know the game. Patty, in true Patty fashion, gives him nothing. “What. Is. Going. On.”

Patty's mouth thins out nervously and he reaches up to uselessly push his hair behind his ears. “So, you know that girl I've been talking to on Insta?”

Travis’ mouth drops open, eyebrows making a run for his hairline. “_Dude,_” and he's kind of mad, actually— he's no good when he's sleepy, gets grumpy as shit— if Patty called him here just to brag about some 32 year old Insta model he bagged, Travis will _ lose _it—

Patty cuts him off. “No, like, so we were talking about meeting up, maybe—” He shifts on his feet, but something about the movement is stilted.

“Patty, dude, I will be so _fucking _ happy for you when you tell me this story tomorrow at practice, but right now I am going to go _ home, _and—”

“Just come here,” Patty cuts him off impatiently, turning and heading for the en-suite bathroom. Travis’ irritation dries up— Patty’s not walking right. He's not _ limping _exactly but there's something careful about the way he's moving, like he's got a hurt and he's trying not to bother it. 

Travis follows him into the bathroom, wide awake now, buzzing. “Is it your knees? Hips again? Did you fall when you were skating, or like— What's all this?” The bathroom counter is covered in plastic bags and little boxes and a bunch of papers and little wooden sticks and—

Patty ignores all of Travis’ rambling confusion. “So she said she likes guys who are like..." The pause is thick, embarrassed. Patty grits his teeth a little but finishes up with, "Smooth.”

Travis can't fathom why Patty is still banging on about his little Instagram crush when he's clearly injured. “Smooth?” he repeats, “What, like pick-up lines?”

Instead of answering, Patty glances down at the mess on the counter and Travis follows suit. Feels like he's doing a math problem in slow motion when he starts piecing together the words _ WAXING _ and _ HAIR REMOVAL _ on all the scattered packaging. There's a little pot plugged into the wall, a little wooden popsicle stick smeared with some yellow goop beside it. Visual fucking story-telling, real Hitchcock stuff.

Oh shit. “Like your... like your legs, right?” Travis asks nervously, hoping for Patty's sake he's right but knowing otherwise in his heart and sympathetic balls, just from the way Patty's standing not-quite-right, a little more hunched than usual.

“I'm kind of freaking out,” Patty admits, this practiced bland intonation— Travis can't help it, he breaks out in hysterical giggles. Patty’s cheek twitches like he wants to smile. That's good at least. 

“So did you rip your dick off, or—?” God, Travis might not make it through this. Maybe he's still dreaming. Definitely hopes so; it'd be hilarious to tell Real Patty about this in the morning.

“That's kind of the problem,” Patty grimaces, face _ blazing _but looking braver than Travis would in his place. “I can't do it.”

“You can't do it.”

Patty nods grimly. “Can't do it.”

Travis scrubs his hands over his face, trying not to laugh again and then giving into it because _ fuck. _“Okay, so what do we do? Go to the hospital?” Even now, just standing still, it's clear something's off with Patty, the way he's half-leaning against the wall like he's avoiding a tender spot and, well.

“Trav, I need you to listen to me: if this went on the internet anywhere,” Patty enunciates each word carefully, “I would lay down and I would die.”

Travis rolls his eyes. “You would not.”

“I would quit hockey and move to the woods and no one would ever see me again.”

Okay, Travis will bite on that one. “You might,” he allows, then, “So what? Call some black market waxing lady off the internet?”

Patty visibly steels himself before saying, “I need you to just do it.”

“Nike,” supplies Travis helpfully. 

It’s definitely a sign of how much Patty likes him and/or is terrified of ripping off his own balls that he doesn’t just kick Travis out. Instead, he closes his eyes for a second and breathes, some mindfulness yoga shit that has _I spent a summer lakehouse-ing _ _ Jonathan Toews, no big deal _written all over it. 

Once Patty is done _ existing through it _ or whatever, Travis asks, “So how are we doing this?” He doesn’t even know where to start. 

“You just have to like, grab it and pull.” Patty’s hand drifts to the front of his pants, not pressing down but just nervously hovering. He’s paler than usual, which Travis thinks is justified. 

“Alright,” Travis says, nodding down at Patty’s sweats. “Drop ‘em.”

It’s like a horror movie, watching Patty push the band of his sweats down until Travis is looking at his soft dick, his mass of pubes, and then the awful tiny strip of white paper clearly stuck along the thin skin at the crease of his groin. The sight of it sends a terrified thrill straight up Travis’ spine, and he’s probably looking at it too much but— “_Fuck_, Pat.”

“I _ know_.”

_Alright_, Travis thinks to himself, then out loud, “Alright,” because if he feels nervous it’s nothing to the way Patty looks, whole body tight. _ Just do it_, Patty said, and that seems to be the only way. “Where do I grab it?” 

“I don’t know, man, just one of the edges—” Travis takes his word for it, crosses the bathroom in two steps and grabs one loose end of the paper. He’s never had his hand this close to anyone else’s dick before, but that hardly seems like a pressing concern given the current circumstances. 

“So I just pull?” Travis clarifies, voice distinctly weird. “Like, I just pull up? Or should I pull down? Or like, sideways, maybe? Do I do it all at once or should I pull it in sections—”

“Just fucking do it, dude,” Patty groans, condemned man talking to the executioner vibe. 

Travis doesn’t realize he’s saying _ ohmygodohmygodohmygod _ under his breath until Patty hisses, “_Shut up_, Trav, that’s not fucking helping—”

“Okay,” Travis is going to pass out. The edge of the waxing paper feels incredibly flimsy between his fingers; hard to believe it will stand up against the absolute jungle between Patty’s legs, but that’s none of Travis’ business, and anyway— “Okay, count of three—”

Patty breathes out in a rush, chest collapsing a little. 

“One,” Travis says bravely.

Patty’s got one hand braced on the wall behind him, two fingers tapping against the wood.

“Two,” Travis perseveres. 

Patty projects an aura of hostility, but Travis doesn’t take it personal. 

“Three,” Travis apologizes, closing his eyes and _ yanking_.

The resistance is upsetting, like he can feel every centimeter of Patty’s skin trying not to let the hair go. It’s over in a second; it takes forever. He doesn’t know how much force to give it, what the release will feel like, so he ends up swinging his arm back in almost a full arc, trailing the little paper strip full of Patty’s poor pubes.

For a second he thinks maybe all that build-up was for nothing, because Patty hasn’t made a sound— maybe it didn’t hurt, somehow, even though it _ sounded _like Travis just tore all the skin off Patty’s dick— he glances at Patty’s face, his eyebrows pulled into a harsh V and his jaw clenched so hard it makes Travis’ teeth ache.

Patty pulls in a deep breath through his nose before saying, “FUCK.” so loud and plaintive that something pounds on the floor below them, Kevin’s muffled, half-asleep voice calling up, “_Y’alright?” _

Travis winces at the audible thunk when Patty drops his head back against the wall, lets himself collapse fully until it’s pretty much the only thing holding him up. He’s cupping his dick in one huge hand, using the other press at the place the cursed strip had been. “_Fuck_,” he repeats, quieter this time but no less feelingly. 

The skin underneath Patty’s hand looks blazingly red, and all of Travis’ nerves protest in solidarity, a phantom pain just under his skin. “Here, let me see it,” he says, knocking Patty’s hand away without thinking. God, what if they ripped something and Patty gets further sidelined with some traumatic embarrassing groin injury— if Patty has to tell the trainers about this, Travis isn’t sure he wouldn’t just decide to walk out on his contract instead, head to Russia and play for some Siberian team where no one ever asks about his business—

Patty hisses when the air hits him, but it doesn’t— it doesn’t honestly look _ that _bad? A little swollen, a few stray pieces of wax left behind, but there’s no blood. If he’s being honest, Travis was picturing blood. 

“What’s the damage?” Patty asks, eyes on the ceiling. He still sounds winded. 

“It’s fine,” Travis reassures him, stepping back and surveying the entire landscape, and— ah. That’s an issue. “Uh, it does look—” Stupid. “Maybe not exactly right.” Patty’s so hairy from his feet up to his hips; even with his sweats just pushed down to his upper thighs, the little strip of hair missing draws the eye in a way that’s not particularly flattering. “Dude, maybe we should just do the rest now, while you’re like—”

“No fucking way,” Patty hisses immediately, cradling his dick again like Travis is going to snatch it from him. 

Travis holds up his hands in surrender, trying to ease the hunted look in Patty’s eyes. “Okay, dude, okay. It was just an offer.”

Patty squints at him suspiciously but finally lets his dick go long enough to pull his sweats back up. He’s still moving gingerly, but nothing compared to when Travis first got here so that’s a win. While Patty shuffles around the bathroom shoving all the waxing shit back into shopping bags, Travis glances down at his phone and groans. It’s so late it’s early. By the time he gets back home, he might as well start the coffee pot. 

“Just stay here,” Patty says, rolling his eyes like it was obvious Travis was allowed. “There are like twenty rooms.”

Simply hearing the offer of a place to sleep is enough to remind Travis’ body that it’s exhausted. He doesn’t even bother accepting, just follows Patty out into the hall and stumbles into whichever room he’s waved into. Once he’s safely installed in a sparsely decorated guest room and frantically trying to wind down enough to rest, it occurs to Travis that he did not wash his hands. There are more pressing issues, definitely, but that’s such a small one to latch onto— and it does let him finally get to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

He isn’t expecting Patty to ride shotgun to practice, but he won’t pretend to hate it. It’s funny to realize he’s missed this grumpy, mean-as-shit morning Patty— even the way he scowls and grunts, “Obviously,” when Travis asks if he wants to stop for breakfast.

“How’s your—” Travis lets go of the wheel just long enough to make a hand gesture that doesn’t translate to much. 

Patty just grumbles at him from beneath the toque he’s pulled down over his eyes, pre-verbal without coffee. Travis will try again post-Dunkin’, maybe even after lunch. Fair to say Patty had a rough one last night. 

Once they get to the rink, it turns out to be mostly a watching-tape and talking-shop kind of day, which suits Travis fine for once. He settles in between Sanny and Patty, babies his iced coffee like the little lifesaver it is. Doesn’t really take in much from the projector, but that’s his MO. Wouldn’t want to surprise anyone. Everything’s cruising until the lights flick back on and the conditioning coach tells them to suit up for a light skate— Patty goes stiff beside him, from nearly unconscious to rigor mortised in a second. 

Practices are still hard for him, Travis knows— not really getting to participate, having to skate lazy circles and wait for everyone to finish up so he can take a few drills by himself. That shit sucks, he hates it, Travis hates it for him. But he doesn't really show it like this.

Travis’ heart sinks a little— maybe it’s a bad day. He goes out of his way to bump against Patty’s shoulder as they make their way to suit up and Patty looks down at him, surprised. 

Travis grins, because it's Patty. Patty grins back, looking like an entire goon. That's better. 

But then practice is over and Travis is drenched, trying to catch his breath at his locker and not thinking about too much of anything. Hockey’s great for that. He's kinda hungry. Tacos, maybe.

His fugue state is broken by someone saying, “Chin up, man!” and he glances up just in time to see Laughts slapping Patty on the back in passing. And yeah, Patty looks weird again, stiff and nervous like it's his first time in a new room. 

Travis doesn’t get what’s up, except then everyone’s stripping down and Patty’s just kind of fucking around at his stall and oh yeah, his dick has the world’s worst haircut and he’s in a hockey locker room and he’s Patty. Jeez.

“Hey, Pats!” he calls, mouth open before he even thinks through it. Patty glances over his shoulder, face all pissy, but he stomps over when Travis waves at him.

“You couldn't get up and walk two feet?” he bitches, standing in front of Travis with his hands on his hips like he's getting ready to tell him off. 

“I'm busy,” Travis says, gesturing down to his half-untied skates. “D’you wanna get lunch? I want tacos. Or steak. Taco steak.”

“Steak tacos,” Patty corrects automatically. “Sure, where?”

Travis is a genius. He scoots over to make room for Patty to sit beside him, slapping the bench until Patty gets the message and pops down. “I don't know, Google some places. Read me some reviews. Nothing too spicy.”

Patty grumbles, “You're so soft,” but pulls out his phone and starts scrolling and huffing as he reads out shit like, “_Five stars: it was good. _ Wow, thanks. _ One star: waiter said my baby was ugly. _Can't go there, don't wanna hear you cry when they call you ugly.”

Travis smiles to himself in the middle of pulling his practice jersey off. “Aw, am I your baby, bud?”

He doesn't even have to look to know Patty’s face is flaming, can hear it in the disgusted noise he makes before saying, “Dude, shut the _ fuck _up. Go to lunch by yourself, asshole.” But he doesn't go back to his own stall, so Travis lets himself laugh. 

Hanging out with Patty is like this sometimes— Travis gets kinda giddy, kinda stupid. 

“You guys just gonna hang here all day?” Travis jumps a little, but so does Patty— Kevin's standing over them, already in street clothes, and— yeah, when Travis glances around, the room’s mostly emptied, just a few stragglers pulling on shoes or tossing things into their gear bags. God, Travis is so smart. He really nailed this one.

“We were trying to figure out lunch,” Patty says, lurching to his feet and right into a stretch. His back pops audibly and Travis scrunches his face against the sound. Patty wanders back to his own stall and Kevin follows. “Gonna take Trav out for thank you tacos.”

“Thanks for what?” Kevin asks, eyebrows shooting up in genuine curiosity, and Patty freezes. 

“Driving him to practice,” Travis cuts in, suddenly too busy pulling his leggings off to see how any stragglers take that. 

“Dude, I drive you to practice _ every day,” _ Kevin yowls. “Where are my tacos, Patty? I ask you, where is the _ justice!_” 

He's half-kidding but mostly not. Patty concedes, offering to take him out next time, and Kevin bangs his way out of the room until it's just the two of them. Travis is buttoning his pants when he hears Patty finally start dropping gear, the soft sounds of his jersey and shorts hitting the ground and then the bulkier noise of his pads.

He glances over just to check and Patty seems to feel it, looks right back at him. He flashes Travis his dimples for just a second before fixing his face flat and complaining— “You didn't even shower, man, the restaurant's not gonna give us a table when they smell you.”

“If I have to wait for you to rinse down all 90 feet of your flamingo legs, I'm gonna die of starvation in this locker room,” Travis threatens, and his stomach rumbles helpfully. “Patty, come onnn, we've been here for hours. Wipe down and let’s goooo.”

Patty bitches the whole time but does it, toweling off his hair and residual sweat before throwing on deodorant and starting to pull on clothes _ finally_. Travis catches just a glimpse of his fucked up bush, just enough to think that waiting everyone out was probably a good idea.

Then again, maybe Travis just knew what to look for. Maybe it's not even that big a deal. 

When they get in his car, he _ does _wish he'd listened to Patty about the shower thing. They do kinda reek. 

* * *

They haven’t even gotten their waters when Patty says, “We’ve gotta finish the drill.”

“The drill?” Travis is still looking at the menu so it takes him a minute. But then he catches the steely look on Patty’s face and decides to instead go with, “_We?_”

Patty’s mouth goes all flatline, just staring like that’ll make Travis give in. And like, it does, but it sucks that Patty _ knows _it’ll work.

“When?” Travis concedes.

“Soon,” Patty demands. “Before it starts growing back.”

And, yeah, that’d look pretty stupid— all shaved up and one lonely strip of hair growing back in. Not even in that cool landing strip place girls do sometimes. Just weirdly off to the side. Travis grimaces. 

“Tonight?”

Patty does the Patty-equivalent of rearing back, wrinkling his nose and glaring. “Fuck no. You don’t even know what you’re doing.”

“So you’re giving me homework?” And isn’t that just Patty in a nutshell. But also— “Fine, whatever, your majesty. Just let me know when you’re up for it, I guess.”

Patty drops his eyes down to his menu, that fucking... demure or what-the-fuck-ever look he does sometimes. It always knocks Travis sideways for some reason, has his head spinning when Patty mumbles, “Thanks,” without looking up. 

Jeez. 

* * *

Travis is almost expecting the text. It's just a feeling that's been itching around in him all day— less noticeable this morning before the game against the Yotes but clearer now that the two points are safely tucked away. He hadn't known exactly what was chewing on him but then there it was waiting in the locker room after the game— meeting Patty’s eyes while the music blasted, watching Patty’s cheeks split into a grin. Sometimes Travis feels like a dog with a bone.

At least Patty’s _ come over _text makes it seem like maybe he's not the only one.

Kevin's sacked out in the living room when Travis lets himself in, one leg thrown over the back of the couch and snoring like a monster. He doesn't even twitch at the sound of the door opening, but Travis doubts anyone could hear it over how loud ESPN is blaring through the TV anyway.

Travis kicks his shoes off and pads up the stairs to Patty's room. 

“About time,” is all the greeting he gets, and they've really got to work on Patty's house training. Travis might be smiling, but Patty does have to go out into the real world sometimes and interact with non-Travis people. They probably don't like it as much. 

Travis makes his way over to Patty’s bed, collapsing across the comforter so he can see what Patty’s got up on his laptop. 

Ah. 

“Wikihow, huh?”

Patty doesn't bother closing the “How to Do a Male Brazilian Wax (with Pictures)” window, so Travis figures he's allowed to keep looking; he’s read the article anyway. The pictures are all these simple lines, clean close-up drawings where you can't really tell what's what. Hadn’t been super helpful.

Patty clears his throat. “Figured you didn’t do your homework.”

Ha. What Patty does _ not _need to know is how many “male brazilian wax???” Youtube videos Travis has watched in the last couple days. That is between him and God and also, unfortunately, Sanny’s girlfriend because apparently the living room TV was still logged onto Travis’ Youtube profile, whatever that means and however that happens. The look she’d given him when he walked in on her staring at all the bare dicks on the little “Recommended From Your Watch History” tab on the big screen... fair but unnecessary. 

“Did you take an aspirin or anything?” Travis asks, looking away from the laptop screen to Patty’s genuinely surprised face. 

“Yeah,” he says, and _ ha _ again because Travis _ definitely _ did his homework so _ there. _He stopped just short of buying a waxing kit off Amazon and doing his own leg or something as practice. 

“Alright,” Travis rolls to his feet, heading towards the bathroom and leaving Patty to stare after him. “Let’s get this party started before that wears off.” The bags of waxing stuff are still on the bathroom counter, all shoved to one side. Nothing’s set up but Travis hadn’t really expected anything else. He pokes his head back out into the bedroom. “You wanna go grab some beers while I get this all started?”

Patty’s goes all cat-with-its-tail-caught-in-a-door, lurching up and pushing his laptop away. “You’re not coming near my dick with even a whiff of alcohol in you, dude—”

“For you, jerk,” Travis cuts him off, rolling his eyes. “This is going to take some time and you’re already freaking out.”

“I am not—” Patty’s voice cuts out, too deep to crack but the effect is the same. He clears his throat and tries again, slower. “I am not freaking out.” But he’s already getting up off the bed and heading for the door, so Travis counts it as a win. 

He ducks back into the bathroom and spreads everything across the counter. So, things Travis knows from frantic Googling and Youtubing: there are different kinds of wax, one of them apparently hurts more, and it was the one Patty used last time, with the little paper strip. He needs something different, and— score, Patty’s got it, a bag of pink wax beads. 

There’s an extra pot for the cheap wax warmer Patty got in the box it came in, so Travis tosses the one full of the old dried yellow wax in the sink. Once the warmer’s plugged in and the pot’s filled with the pink beads, all that’s left to do is wait.

Except Travis is nervous as shit, so he can’t just sit around. He grabs a big towel off the rack on the wall and heads back out into the bedroom where Patty’s nursing a beer and trying not to look scared. Patty doesn’t ask what Travis is doing when he smooths the towel out over one corner of the bed, but Travis can feel him tracking every movement. 

“It’s gonna take a bit to warm up,” Travis explains. “I don’t know if you wanna pull up Netflix or something—”

“It said I should trim.” Patty’s got the label of his beer half-peeled, thumb worrying the glue left on the bottle. “Like, before. I didn’t do that last time.” He shows his teeth like he’s reliving the memory.

Travis noticed that but didn’t realize it’d been a mistake until he was neck-deep in advice articles. “Okay, yeah, you should definitely—”

“It said you can do too much. Like, make it too short, so the wax doesn’t... stick.” Patty’s face is glowing and he’s looking surly about it. “I didn’t want to fuck it up.”

Travis blinks at him. “Ooookay,” he says, reaching down to straighten the towel a little bit where one of the corners is curled up. Looks like a snag in the stitching. Huh. “Well, you’ve gotta do it, dude. All the articles said it’s dangerous to have...” He trails off, doing the mental math of Patty’s stiff shoulders and the brave tilt to his chin. “Oh.” 

Which is how he ends up on his knees on the rug outside Patty’s shower, using the scissors from the first aid kit under Patty’s sink to give his dick the world's most uneven crewcut. It was a little awkward at first, but now Travis is thinking it’s probably a good idea to get acquainted— a little handshake before they jump into the deep end. 

“Can you—” Travis does a motion he intends to mean ‘lift your dick so I can trim the hair on your balls, please’, and he must do well enough because Patty follows along. The whole ritual has a distinctly odd feeling, obvious aside; it’s less urgent and heart-pounding than the waxing— just careful snips of the scissors, not too close to the skin. Travis almost feels _ too _aware of everything, watching the light glint off the silver blades, the tufts of hair falling away and leaving goose-bumped skin underneath. 

The little _ snck _of the scissors closing is oddly satisfying, lulls Travis into a meditative state until he’s hardly paying attention to the larger picture of what he’s doing. He only comes back to himself when Patty makes a cut-off noise in the back of his throat, muscles bunching under Travis’ hand where it’s resting on his thigh. He’d been pushing, trying to get Patty to turn away, and Patty’s stanced up, resisting the force and glaring down suddenly like Travis did something out of left field. 

“We’ve gotta do—” Travis twirls a finger in the air, raising his eyebrows with intent, “all of it.”

Patty’s jaw tics.

“Unless you wanna leave the back?” Travis is realizing that he didn’t bother to ask the scope of practice here. Maybe, rightfully, understandably, Patty’s Insta model isn’t really invested in whether or not he waxes his ass. Travis hadn’t even considered it. All the videos included the ass part. 

Instead of answering, Patty turns, stiff-legged, bending forward to put his hands on the shower wall and give Travis better access. 

Weird that it wasn’t until this point that things started to feel a little much. The hem of Patty’s t-shirt rides up the ridges of his spine, which is easier to focus on for the moment than Patty’s ass in his face. Things Travis did not envision at any point in the planning process, despite his best efforts to prepare himself. 

“Okay,” Travis says to absolutely no one, because there’s no way Patty’s not astral projecting to a different galaxy right now. Travis really wishes they’d thought to put music on. His whole body feels strange. “Okay,” he says again, watching his own hand reach out to palm one of Patty’s cheeks— like watching a stranger do it almost, how fucking weird is that— and push it to the side. 

Trying not to look and having to look, all at the same time. His hands feel unsteady suddenly in a way they hadn’t when he was trimming up Patty’s bush. “Can you—” God, his voice sounds weird, “—hold this?” And he squeezes Patty’s ass a little to show what he’s talking about, because he’s apparently lost his mind. 

To his credit, Patty doesn’t donkey kick him or anything, just bends further forward to prop himself against the wall with an elbow while he reaches back to do what Travis asked. 

“My hands just feel a little—” Travis starts, eyes stuck on how different it feels to look at Patty’s own massive hand on his ass. His hand is huge. It changes the way his waist looks, the dip of his hip. The raw red skin of his knuckles contrasting the pale, smooth skin of his lower back and ass— it makes Travis blink. “—shaky,” he finishes, shaking his head and looking down at his fingers stuck through the little silver rings of the scissor handles. He clicks them open and shut a few times, just to reset everything. “Don’t wanna cut you.”

Again, Patty doesn’t answer, but the muscles around the base of his spine visibly tighten when Travis presses the cool blade of the scissors against the thinner, darker skin exposed to the air. _ Not too close_, he reminds himself, then says it out loud because he’s got to say something. The silence is making him feel crazy. “Sorry, I know— half a centimeter, right? I’ve got it, you’re good.” He uses one hand to grip Patty’s calf to stabilize himself, works the scissors as quickly as he safely can with the other. He’s sweating by the time he’s done, t-shirt clinging to his back. 

When he finally leans back and rocks to his feet, he feels light-headed. Maybe he was on his knees too long; maybe it cut off the flow of blood to his brain. Patty steps out of the shower and grabs a towel to wrap around his waist, brushing past Travis to get out of the bathroom. By the time Travis has gotten his wits together enough to follow, Patty’s standing in the middle of his room with his head thrown back, downing another beer so quickly it almost looks violent. 

“Alright,” Travis says, just to say something, because he’s gotta, “so you’ve gotta be like...” He pauses, suddenly unsure how to explain the positioning now that he’s actually faced with Patty glaring mulishly at the bed. “Uh, on the towel—” Patty snorts. “And kind of—” He puts his hands together and opens them like a very uncomfortable flower. “Spread.”

The look Patty gives him is aimed to kill, but Travis is a strong, brave young man. “I’m gonna go grab that wax if you wanna—” He waves at the towel, the bed, Patty. “Get ready.”

Which is why it’s so weird that when he walks back in the room and Patty did exactly what he told him to (naked, on the towel, on his back, legs frogged) Travis has this fully out of body experience for a second. Patty still has his snapback on. Why is that the craziest thing Travis has ever seen? He plugs the little wax pot into the outlet near Patty’s bed and sets it on the table, very carefully does not look at Patty at all while he lays out all the supplies— mineral oil: check, popsicle sticks: check, more towels in case of unforeseen disaster: check. His heart’s thumping in his ears, probably just because it’s so quiet— he plugs his phone into the the cable on Patty’s nightstand, blindly chooses the first playlist that pops up on Spotify while he tries to pull his brain together. 

Patty makes this noise that’s all contempt when the opening chords start up, but he’ll just have to deal. Travis is doing him a favor; he gets to pick the music.

“Alright, so first we need to put this—” Travis shakes the little bottle of oil, “everywhere. It’s supposed to make it hurt less and like, work better, so two-for-one there—”

“You really—” Patty comes up on one elbow, hand scrubbing over his face and fucking up his hat and hair. “You really don’t have to talk me through the whole thing. I—”

Travis’ brain does its usual, speeding ahead to finish the sentence every possible way before Patty can get to it: _don’t want to hear it, will literally kick your ass, _etc.

Except Patty says, “—trust you,” in his gruffest voice before spinning his hat forward so the bill covers his eyes when he lays back down. Travis blinks at what he can still see of Patty’s face, the tight mouth and flaming cheeks, clenched jaw. He feels a little concussed. Like, just go to the bench and have a seat for a second, don’t worry about going to the locker room. This is a game seven, after all. All hands on deck. 

“All hands on deck,” Travis says out loud, because the twangy guitar from the phone speaker is suddenly not enough input. He brightens. “All hands on—”

“Do not,” Patty says. He crosses his hands over his stomach, seems to rethink it and puts them behind his head. Barely settles before he puts one hand back on his stomach. Says, “Fuck, Trav, you’re killing me. Do or die, man.”

Travis laughs, only a little hysterical, and pours (objectively too much) mineral oil into his cupped palm. “We’re not even American.” 

Patty’s lips twitch into a grin. He opens his mouth to shoot something back, but then sort of chokes. Travis, in fairness, did just slap a handful of oil on his crotch with no warning. It seemed like the best option. 

He does his best to be mechanical about it but this part is a little weird, even with all the other weirdness taken into account and tallied up. He’s just gotten to the point of dragging his oily hand over Patty’s balls when he realizes Patty really, with zero trouble, could’ve done this whole part himself. Whoops. He glances up at Patty’s face to see if that thought is mirrored on any of the bits that aren’t hidden in hat-shadow, but what Travis can see of him doesn’t look any particular kind of way except maybe nervous, if he squints. 

“Awesome, alright so next—” Travis grimaces, “I’m gonna talk for me, okay? I swear I like, studied, but I’ll feel better if I—”

“Talk. Yeah, big surprise.” 

He kind of wishes Patty’s hat would fall off or something. It’s so fucking weird to be hands-on-ing his dick while he just zones out. Then again, the other option of him paying attention also seems like a lot. Almost like there’s no comfortable way to do this. 

“So now we’re gonna do the wax— let me just see if it’s hot enough—” Travis scoops one of the popsicle sticks into the wax, swirls it and drags it back out, lets the brilliant pink goop slowly fall off the stick and back into the pot. That looks right— like, from all the videos, that seems good. Not too hot, not too cold. Goldilocks. 

“Alright, I’m gonna- we’re gonna start—” Travis drags Patty’s bedside table closer so he doesn’t trail wax over the floor, then reaches out and taps the soft skin above the crease of Pattys right hip. “Here. The videos said it’s a good introductory spot—” Which, maybe Patty knows. That’s the spot he’d stuck the strip to on the opposite side. At least he did _ some _research. Travis takes a deep breath before going for broke, using the popsicle stick to smear the wax in a long streak over the trimmed hair above-and-to-the-side of Patty’s dick. 

“Not too hot?” he checks, watching the bright pink wax spread over Patty’s pale skin. It’s a really pretty color, vivid: feels like he’ll still be able to see it when he closes his eyes. 

Patty grunts, sounding generally positive for someone in his position. 

“Alright, so it’s just got to set a few seconds, and then we’ll—” Travis swallows, hopefully not as audible as it feels, “we’ll do it. Uh, the waxing part.” He reaches down and touches a finger to the wax, experimental, but it's cooled to body temperature already, solid under his fingertip. His nerves jangle, heart skipping around. “Alright, so I’m gonna... brace it, like this—” He places a flat palm across the span of Patty’s hip, right at the bottom of the wax strip, pressing down— everything said to press harder than you think you should, so he puts his back into it—

“Are you trying to make me piss myself right now?”

Travis startles, pulling both his hands away and looking up to Patty’s face, his visibly gritted teeth. “What?”

“It’s a new thing I’m trying,” Patty says, running his own hand over the wax and the cradle of his hips, testing the edges of the strip with his fingers. “I keep my organs in here.”

“Oh!” Travis laughs. “Sorry, sorry, okay, let’s try—” He puts his hand back, knocking Patty’s out of the way, and presses down firmly but less frantically. The video people probably weren’t counting on the waxers being professional athletes, an oversight on both Travis’ part and theirs. “That good?”

Patty huffs.

“Alright, now I’ve just gotta get a grip on it—” Travis scrabbles at the lower edge of the smear of wax, scraping his blunt fingernails over Patty’s skin. It looked so much easier in all the videos, but those people had nice-as-shit manicured nails. Must be handy. Travis is so focused on trying to get a handle on the little wax strip that it takes him a minute to notice Patty squirming around against the sheets. Travis glances up in time to see him throw an arm over his face, knocking his hat to the bed as he breaks out into frantic... giggles, almost?

“What _ now_?” Travis demands. He’s having a really hard time getting into the just-do-it headspace when Patty won’t stop throwing him off. 

“That tickles, dude; I feel like I’m freaking out.” Patty’s speaking muffled into the crook of his elbow, fingers of his other hand tapping randomly on the sheets. He shifts his hips again under Travis’ hand, resettling. “Sorry, but _ fuck_, can’t you just—”

“Do it? I’m fucking _ trying_, Pats—” Travis makes a triumphant noise when he finally gets the edge of the wax to roll up. Awesome. Now he just has to do that about thirty more times, after he does this next part. And then repeat. Oh boy. “Alright, so just- uh, deep breath in, and then on the count of three, breathe out, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, let’s get this show on the road.”

“One... Two...” God, Travis’ fingers feel like they’re shaking where he’s gripping the wax for dear life; the palm he has spread over Patty’s hip is sweating. He gulps in a huge breath at the same time as Patty, says, “Three!” and uses a slapshot’s worth of force to yank the wax strip up and off. 

It is _the _strangest sensation— the resistance and then the give, but he doesn’t get to dwell on it because Patty’s whole body kind of caves in, knees curling up to his chest and knocking Travis away. 

Patty just _ mmmmmmmmmmm_s with his mouth in a tight line, chin thrown back so the corded muscles of his neck stand in sharp relief. His nostrils flare when he pulls in another breath, then he relaxes his whole body on the exhale, knees falling spread back to the covers and arms dropping lax to his sides, even the one he’d been using to cover his face. He blinks rapidly up at the ceiling for a few seconds before finally opening his mouth just wide enough to say, “fuck,” in the tiniest voice Travis has ever heard. 

Travis reaches down to rub over the newly bare skin because all the videos said it would be soothing. It also feels really nice under his hand— the velvety waxed strip in sharp contrast to the prickly hair around it. “Do you wanna see the strip?” he asks, holding it up over Patty’s face while he keeps petting at him. 

“What the fuck, _ no_,” Patty groans, and there’s his arm back over his face. “I can’t believe you let me do this.”

“_Let you— _” You know what? No. Travis is not going to have this discussion right now. He drops the strip of wax to the floor and goes to get another popsicle stick. At this rate, they’ll be here all night. He mirrors the wax placement on the opposite side, lets it set, pulls up an edge (with less difficulty this time, thank god) and starts the count again. He’s less nervous this time— less in his head. Ends up watching the way Patty’s chest expands as he breathes in on the first two counts, the knife-edge where his lungs are full and his whole body’s poised right before Travis says, “Three,” again. 

Patty’s response is less dramatic this time, or maybe just more controlled. His inner thighs flex where he’s holding them open, shoulders rolling against the sheets to keep from curling in on himself like he had the first time. Travis pets at him again, feeling a little numb and stupid watching Patty’s body settle. 

“Better that time?” he asks, dropping the used wax in the beginnings of a little pile. Patty just hums, rolling his head from side to side.

“Okay, this is supposed to be the worst part—” Travis brushes his knuckles through the thickest patch of hair right above Patty’s dick. “Do you wanna do it now or save it for last?” 

In some ways Travis doesn’t know why he even asks. He knows Patty well enough to be able to mouth along when he grits out, “Let’s get it over with.” Worst part, first part— that’s Patty in the gym and eating food he doesn’t care for and doing interviews after games. Only way out is through.

They can probably get this whole part done in two yanks, which is great news for Patty and for the sympathetic stinging in Travis’ own skin each time he tears the wax off. This bit does require him to actually touch Patty’s dick, which is, safe to say, objectively kind of weird. Like, it’s all weird, but grabbing Patty’s soft dick and pulling it a little so he can spread the wax up to the hairs covering the base... like, he can admit it feels wild. He keeps throwing curious glances up to Patty’s half-covered face, waiting for him to throw in the towel or toss up a warning flag, anything. He wonders if Patty read the same comments on that WikiHow article about how getting a boner can be helpful for the waxing process. Travis tries to imagine what that would even look like, how they’d even manage it. Patty’s dick doesn’t look particularly interested; it mostly looks scared. Possibly the softest dick Travis has ever seen, not that he’s been counting. 

“Alright, countdown,” Travis says, pretending for both of them that he’s not holding Patty’s dick firmly in hand, about to rip the hair right off it. Patty visibly swallows but gives a sideways thumbs up. 

Travis watches the shaky expanse of Patty’s chest on his inhale, the way his stomach hollows because he’s too freaked out to breathe right. Travis can hear the conditioning coach in his head: _ diaphragm, Patrick, it’s all about the diaphragm_.

He goes on three, trying to balance the heavy pull of his waxing hand and not crushing Patty’s dick with the other. It requires a crazy amount of coordination and he feels tingly when it goes right, the strip coming off in one clean pull. He drops it at Patty’s hip right away, hurrying to rub at the rush of red under Patty’s skin.

Patty groans, this long, low, “_ooooh my god_,” that’s all gravel. It makes Travis’ stomach twist; even more: watching the flex of Patty’s hands on nothing, just feeling everything. He stayed pretty still. That’s insane. 

“That was awesome,” Travis says, kind of stunned. “You did great.”

Patty’s face is brilliantly red, cheeks probably hot from being covered by his own arm for so long. He doesn’t answer, just breathes, which reminds Travis—

“Diaphragm, Patrick,” he tries, doing his best impression of the conditioning coach that rides Patty’s ass the hardest. He gently slaps at Patty’s stomach, not enough to sting, and Patty huffs out a strained laugh. 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Travis gets the next popsicle stick ready, talks the whole time. “Just that one more time, then the rest is easy road, bud. We might be done before next week even—” Patty snorts. “And I think it’s gonna—” Travis trips over what he was going to say but keeps his hands steady spreading the wax. Goes for broke anyway. “I think it’s gonna look pretty sick. Worth all this, even.”

Patty doesn’t say anything to that, just shifts his hips against the towel again like he’s trying to ground himself more firmly to the bed. Travis is getting ready to count when Patty cuts him off.

“Do it when I say.” He clears his throat against the crackle in his voice. “I’ll give you a go.”

Travis watches Patty’s inhale this time with a level of attention bordering on clinical fascination— the convex arc of his chest rising off the bed, the veins jumping out in the forearm thrown over his eyes. Patty says, “_Go_,” and Travis does. The noise Patty makes is insane, like he sucks in a breath and blows one out at the same time. The kind of sound that seems like his lungs should collapse, but they don't.

Travis wants to ask if that helped, choosing when it happens, but Patty just says, “Alright. Alright, alright, alright,” chanting a little as Travis strokes the skin calm. “And that’s the worst part— you said that’s the worst part, right?”

“Yep.” Travis grabs yet another popsicle stick. “Everything else is just kind of awkward.” 

A cackle bursts out of Patty, cheeks bulging around a grin. “Yeah? Things gonna get weird?”

Travis can’t help but grin back, even though Patty can’t see. “Yeah, it’s gonna get personal.”

And it does— spreading the wax over the thin skin of Patty’s balls is something a psycho would do, and yet people do this kind of thing every day apparently and Travis is doing it right now. 

Patty says, “This is gonna suck,” when Travis stretches the skin out, which looks objectively equal parts funny and horrifying. 

“You gonna tell me when again?” Travis asks, trying valiantly to ignore how fragile Patty’s whole deal looks spread out like this. Surely when he pulls the wax, something will tear or break or pop off in his hand. Jesus.

“Yeah, I'll tell you.” Patty sucks in a breath: does it right this time, resting a hand on his own stomach to feel where his diaphragm balloons out. Travis is getting the rhythm of his deep breathing down now, knows just how much air Patty can pull in before he pauses at the brink, says _ go _on the beginning of the exhale. 

Travis knows from experience that the human body can be miraculously resilient— get run headfirst into the glass and bounce back a week later (or don’t), take a puck to the mouth and come out for the next shift (or don’t), turn your ankle, break your wrist. There’s no limit to the shit they put themselves through in any given week, October to June, but somehow he feels like he didn’t _ really _get it until he’s watching the muted flex of Patty’s hips in counterpoint to the wax strip tearing away, the blood rushing up under the surface of his skin until it’s nearly glowing, heat washing off in waves. Not to get poetic about it, but bodies are incredible. He tells Patty that because if he keeps it to himself he’ll go even more nuts than he already feels. 

Patty’s voice is stiff when he says, “I’m glad you’re having a good time, man,” which Travis is _ not_, but he’s also not having a bad time, exactly. 

It goes so fast once they get a rhythm going, Travis’ ears pricked like a hunting hound for Patty’s rumbled _ go _each time, palm ready to soothe the freshly waxed skin before the strip’s even all the way off. He’s glad it goes quickly, glad he doesn’t have time to dwell on how nice the smooth skin feels under his hand. Maybe Patty’s Insta ladyfriend is onto something here. 

There’s a little mound of used wax by Travis’ feet by the time the front’s finished up, and he’s feeling really good. He’s nailing this. Patty’s gonna feel awesome when he sees it. 

Travis pats at Patty’s hip to get his attention, has to wait a beat for Patty to uncover his face and actually look at him. “Roll over,” he says, rolling a finger in a circle to demonstrate, and Patty scowls at him. Unbidden, Travis flashes back to Patty standing in the shower, the long line of his back and the way his blush spread down the nape of his neck, past the stretched collar of his t-shirt. 

“I’ve already seen it, man,” Travis reminds him, unsure if that will help or make it worse. 

“_Ugh_,” groans Patty, but he rolls over, fucking up the towel Travis so carefully placed. He starts to lay down but Travis grabs his hip before he can do it.

“Hands and knees, bud,” he apologizes, and Patty makes this angry-cat noise in the back of his throat, goes down on his elbows just to be contrary. His face is going to overheat if he keeps it hidden in his arms like that, but that’s his problem: he’s the one with baby skin. “Alright, oil stuff again—”

And this, funnily enough, is where things go a little sideways. Travis isn’t even thinking about it, about anything; he’s just slicking up his hands to rub Patty down so he doesn’t cause any of the horrifying waxing accidents he read about on Google, but then he kind of— it hits him, is all, that he’s got two handfuls of Patty’s ass, thumbs dangerously close to the crease and then _ in _the crease because that’s what he’s supposed to be doing, after all, but—

Jesus. He says, “Uh,” out loud, stupid as shit, before he even realizes his mouth is just hanging open. He’s not _ trying _ to look at Patty, the broad stretch of his back into the narrow tuck of his hips, but that’s all there is to look at, and boy, is he _ seeing it _suddenly. 

“You good?” Patty asks, muffled into the sheets, and Travis doesn’t, for once, know what to say.

He swipes an oily hand right down the middle of Patty’s ass, trying to move efficiently and touch everything he needs to touch without seeing too much, feeling too much. “I— yeah,” Travis says, a little strangled, “yeah, sorry. I’m good.” He quickly wipes his hands on the bunched up towel beneath Patty’s knees, turning away to grab the wax and shaking his head to clear it all at once. _ Finish the drill, Konecny._

His saving grace is that there are less moving parts in the second half of a Brazilian wax. The Youtube videos he’d watched had almost looked like they were double-speed during this section; the waxer had handled one guy’s ass in a way Travis considered to be bordering on disrespectful. 

He eyeballs a place to start as best he can, because Patty’s legs are covered in thick hair as well, so it would probably look stupid if he was just suddenly hairless starting at his asscheeks? Right? God, Travis spent so much time watching how-to videos that he never bothered to look up examples of where-to. In the end, he does what he thinks will look good, leaving the peach fuzz on Patty’s cheeks and the hair curling where his thighs begin. That all looks soft and good, so Travis instead focuses on the more central areas where the hair’s darker, thicker.

One side at a time, using his free hand to spread Patty’s cheeks (_don’t think about it_), trailing his palms soothingly over the swollen skin after the wax is pulled away (_do not think about it). _ The way Patty lurches forward on his knees to get away from it even when he’s the one saying _ go _ in his shot voice (_stop thinking about it!_). Travis shouldn’t look, tries not to look, because from the videos he knows that things tend to clench in interesting ways when the strip’s torn away, and whatever he’s currently going through in regards to Patty’s body definitely doesn’t need more fodder. It’s bad enough to watch the shifting muscle of Patty’s shoulders each time he moves, the way his back broadens on inhales, collapses on exhales. 

By the time it’s done, Travis’ hands barely feel connected to his body. He drops the final strip to the floor, rubbing thoughtlessly over the sensitive skin of Patty’s taint where the last strip had been, not thinking about a lot of things, among them: how Patty shifts back into the touch. 

“There you go, bud,” Travis soothes, pulling his hand away and moving to turn off the wax, the forgotten music still tumbling from his phone. 

He hears Patty move behind him, the mattress creaking while he shifts on the bed, the soft sound of his bare feet landing on the floor. He turns to grab the used wax off the floor only to find Patty standing in front of his closet, looking at himself critically in the mirror on the back of the door.

Travis hesitates for just a second before saying, “I think your dick looks bigger.” He wasn’t thinking about it but he was thinking about it.

Patty shoots him a _ look _in the mirror, a patented unimpressed eye roll. But when he turns his eyes back on himself, he looks quietly pleased, face all post-goal splotchy red, cheeks bunched up and crinkling the skin around his eyes. Travis doesn’t think about it. In fact, he thinks, as he ducks into Patty’s bathroom to throw all the wax away and scrub his hands, splash water on his face, he’s not going to be weird about it or jerk off about it or think about it at all, because that would be... something. And it’s not anything. It’s just Patty, who he’s always known is objectively hot, and anyone who spent that long touching him and looking at him like that would— feel something about it. 

When Patty pushes into the bathroom, he’s got sweatpants on and his hat shoved back over his wild hair. He’s still red all down his chest, and Travis wishes he’d put a shirt on, then wishes Patty not having a shirt on wasn’t something he noticed. 

“Want a beer?” Patty asks, scratching at the back of his neck. He has a hand down the front of his pants, probably feeling at all the bare skin. Travis can’t blame him: it must be the strangest sensation in the whole world. His own palms burn a little at the sense memory— all that softness.

Travis grins at him, goofy on purpose. “Yeah, grab me two. And let’s order something, I’m starving.”

* * *

Next day’s a day off, and that’s— good, probably. Travis needs to reset a little, watch some television, lay on the couch, figure out what the hell is happening to him. Patty doesn’t text, which is probably for the best, but it doesn’t stop Travis from wondering how he’s doing. 

It's not until Travis is lying in bed that night trying to fall asleep that he finds himself running a palm rhythmically over the cool expanse of his sheets, mind tracing over the feeling with smooth warm skin—

He might be in some trouble.


	3. Chapter 3

Patty’s back to practicing with the team, which is fucking— good. It’s good. Travis is happy about it. He even uses the locker room showers after. Not that Travis had been wondering if he would, but it just seems noteworthy. Afterwards, when Patty’s at his stall pulling his clothes out of his bag, someone wolf-whistles and Travis’ head jerks up, hyperaware.

Of course it’s Kev, staring at Patty’s whole Situation like it's an early birthday present. “Patty!” The Dorchester really comes out when he's being a moron about Patty in particular. “What is this floor model dick you got goin’ on? That shit is _ scaped._” He whistles again, and a few other guys are looking at Patty now too, morbidly curious. “Do we get a discount, buddy?”

Travis has a feeling Kevin Hayes is the only person in the world who could call attention to Patty’s shiny new dick in the middle of a room full of people and not get murdered for it. Evidence: Patty doesn't even look bothered as he pulls his underwear on, even smirks a little when he says, “Yeah, it's on clearance.”

It gets some laughs and Kev whoops, delighted. Travis just grins and shakes his head when Patty catches his eye.

“Hey, celebration dinner for Patty being back at practice!” Kev calls out to the room at large. “Head count!”

Patty’s expression is clearly aiming for sour and embarrassed but it gets stuck right around flattered. 

Beezer tries to beg off, saying he’s got some plans already made. Kevin groans about it but seems willing to let it go until Carter says he’s busy, too. 

“Everyone knows about your fucking wine nights!” Jake yells from somewhere. Travis doesn’t even see him in the bustle of the locker room. 

Kevin’s entire face perks up at the mention of a wine night but he schools himself and turns on the two of them. “You guys can’t skip one wine night to celebrate the return of a fallen brother?” 

“Dude,” Patty mumbles, “I’m not dead.”

“Sometimes I can still hear his voice,” Beezer says solemnly. 

Between Jake and Kevin, they bully together a good group for Patty’s welcome back dinner— even Carter and Bee agree to make an appearance. It’s a nice time altogether and Patty scowls and glows under all the attention. 

Not that Travis is thinking about it.

* * *

Pre-game and they’re on a run. Travis is flying. He’s not even thinking about anything he shouldn’t think about, that’s how fucking good they are. 

“Soooo,” Kevin starts, leaning against Travis’ stall in a way that is almost definitely meant to broadcast casual. He misses the mark by a mile, ends up just sort of _ looming _ and casting a shadow over Travis’ attempt to re-tape one of his socks. “That hardwood floor Patty’s rocking lately.”

Travis feels less _ nervous _ than _ completely detached from his body. _ Maybe this is what Patty feels like all the time. His brain just starts dashing, hare in the woods, kicking off some thoughts, backflipping around others. Biblical miracle that his hands stay steady on the tape. “Are you remodeling his room?” 

“What?” Kevin rears back, nearly losing his balance on his blade covers. “No, I mean his— wait,” he frowns, that concerned hound-dog face. “Does he not like his room?”

“Uhhhh.” For how quickly Travis thought the first time, his brain-hare hits a wall on this one. “Nooooo?” he tries, unable to keep the question out of his voice. 

This will probably have repercussions. Kevin’s brow scrunches. “Oh my god, dude, did he say something to you? Oh my god, I told him to tell me if he—” Kevin seems to forget Travis entirely, whirling on his heel and marching back to his stall. Travis pretends not to watch from the corner of his eye as Kevin pulls out his phone, pounds Patty’s number into the screen—

“Pats!” Oh boy, Travis is going to hear about this one later. He can feel Patty’s ire from the press box already. “Teeks says you hate your room!”

* * *

It's like one in the morning when Travis gets a text that says _ can I ask u something, _ quickly followed by _ if ur up. _ Patty should really be asleep right now according to what Travis knows of his new head-friendly routine, but then Travis should be asleep, too. He sends back _ yea shoot _ and gives into the temptation to sneak out to the kitchen and grab a snack while he waits on whatever Patty’s crisis of the night will be. 

Maybe he wants to wax his armpits now. As much as the mere thought of it makes Travis shove his own hands under his arms for protection, he can't help but picture it— Patty doing something casual like raising his arm above his head in the locker room, maybe he's grabbing his helmet off the top shelf, and all that pale skin up his flank stretches bare right into the soft crook of his underarm. 

Travis shivers, shaking his head as he opens the fridge and ducks in to look for the jar of fancy pickles Sanny hides in the very back. By the time Travis has commandeered a handful of mini sweet pickles, his phone’s buzzed a couple of times in his pocket. Retroactively, with the way his late night text conversations with Patty have gone recently, he really should've known to wait until he was back in his room to check the messages. 

** _Patty:_**

_ cool _

_ nsfw incoming _

And then three pictures of Patty's dick. 

Travis gets so caught up on the whole “Patty’s dick pics” of it all that it takes him a minute to notice the follow-up texts. 

** _Patty:_**

_ which one? _

_ she said my angles are always bad _

There's gotta be some kind of app for this: put your nudes in and get a thumbs up or down or whatever from a robot. Something that would keep Travis passing away due to inhaling an entire bread-and-butter pickle in his dark kitchen in the middle of the night. He chokes it up into the sink, beating his chest as he fights for air.

Fuckin’ Patty. 

First of all:

_ JEEZ DUDE _

That out of the way and life saved (by himself, absolutely zero thanks to Nolan Patrick), Travis scrolls back to the pictures and resolutely clicks into the first one.

It's not... bad? Looks like he's on his bed at Kev’s house. Travis has never received a dick pic that wasn't intended as a joke, so his meter isn't precisely calibrated. But still, it's Patty, who is, Travis is again pretty sure, objectively hot— even if his face isn't visible (good job) and it's mostly just a square shot of his hard dick lying on the (now, thanks to Travis) bare plane of his stomach. If Travis hadn't ripped off Patty's treasure trail, his dick would be resting right on it. How weird.

Second one is maybe a step up. It looks like he's standing this time, back against the wall of his room, hips angled out towards the camera. The disorienting bit is that Travis has seen him stand like this a thousand times, one arm behind his back, hand gripping his opposite elbow. He does it when he's bored or nervous. Feels weird to be able to tell that, for some reason. Personal. 

Travis’ eyes jump over Patty’s dick and straight to the dark blurs of ink on the tops of his thighs, just visible at the bottom of the frame. That seems hot— the suggestion of his tattoos without the danger of identifying features. Travis feels a little proud of Patty and how smart that is. He feels a lot, in general.

Travis swipes down to the third picture with the hopes it'll get rid of the squirmy feeling in his stomach. He is, in short, wildly mistaken. It's _ weird _ , because it's the one with the least dick visible and that's like, the entire point of dick pics (probably?). But Patty’s got one hand braced on the wall and the other wrapped around his dick and his hands are _ so big_. Travis has seen Patty's dick and it's fine— a good one, even— but for some reason the flushed head just barely peeking over the heavy grip of his fist hits Travis right in the gut. His own in-drawn breath is loud in his ears suddenly and he can't stop swallowing, pure reflex.

He nearly throws his phone across the room when it buzzes in his hand. 

** _Patty:_**

_ that bad? _

Travis closes his eyes and thunks his forehead against the kitchen counter top.

Sends back _ 3, night bud _

Is still drinking a glass of tap water and staring very hard at the refrigerator when Patty texts _ thanks, night _

* * *

If Travis were paranoid, he might think Patty was trying to kill him. 

He's bopping around his hotel room, minding his own fucking business, half a continent away from Philly, vibing, thriving, getting ready for bed because he can practically already hear AV’s judgmental _ Good sleep makes good teammates _ speech if he shows up at breakfast tomorrow looking run down. Showered, teeth brushed, suit laid out for tomorrow— he is on top of things. He is nailing it. He is going to have a great game tomorrow. He is 100% not prepared to look down at his phone when he goes to double-check his alarm and see _ it feels weird, i can't stop touching it. _

There are a billion reasons Travis wants Patty to start playing again, but right now top of the list has to be that it’d be way less confusing for Patty to just run him into the boards in a practice if he wanted Travis to die.

_ is something wrong with it?? _

Maybe he's telling on himself— that it took Travis less than a second to realize what Patty was even talking about. There's a chance Travis spends too much time thinking about Patty’s downstairs, but he's not doing it on purpose. For whatever that's worth. 

** _Patty:_**

_ no, just feels nice _

Travis collapses onto the hotel bed, staring mournfully down at Patty’s text. His palms buzz pleasantly, that sense memory again— the give of Patty’s skin, all that warmth under his hands. The contrast of the wiry hair covering Patty’s legs and the smoothness around his dick, that velvety skin in the crook between his groin and thigh.

Travis flexes his fingers, passing his phone back and forth to shake out his hands. What the fuck is he supposed to say to that?

_ did she like the picture? _

He can’t even tell if it’s a weird thing to ask; he doesn’t even know what he wants to hear. The typing bubbles pop up and disappear beneath Patty’s name a handful of times and Travis chews a thumbnail ragged while he watches it happen. 

** _Patty:_**

_said she likes videos better _

Travis considers, for one absolutely insane moment, just walking over to the hotel window and dropping his phone right out it. Then he spends a longer, even more insane moment crafting a response that just ends up being _ no shit? _

He _ does _drop his phone when the FaceTime call comes through, scrambling to grab it off the floor before Patty gives up on him. 

“What?” Travis demands immediately, manners straight out the window (where his phone should’ve gone). 

The screen’s too dark to make out much— just the vague outline of Patty’s nose, his jacket hood pulled up even though he’s apparently already tucked into bed all the way back in Philly. “Are you up for it?” 

That hotel window is looking more and more promising. “Up for what?” Travis dodges, because Patty’s going to have to _ say it _if he’s going to— like, if that’s what he’s after. 

Patty makes this shit-tastic derisive noise that settles warm right in the pit of Travis’ stomach. “You can just say no, dude.”

And like, yeah, obviously, but also— Travis scoots back against the headboard, lets himself reposition until he’s comfortable. “Why, you got someone else you can ask?”

He’s not expecting the light to switch on over on Patty’s end, but there’s the click of a lamp and then Patty’s blank face, matted hair sticking out from his hood at odd intervals. He’s a fucking mess; Travis wants to look at him anyway. “Is that a yes?”

It should _ not _be. Travis is in such deep shit already— he’s jerked off twice not-thinking-about-thinking-about those fucking pictures. He can’t even toss a handful of shampoo on his own bush in the shower without flashing back to that awful counterpoint roll of Patty’s hips against the tear of the waxing strips. 

But Travis says, “Yeah, sure,” because he doesn’t always know what he’s going to say before he says it. 

It is pretty clear once he says it that neither of them have considered the actual mechanics of— the interpersonal politics of like— It’s just that looking at your buddy’s nudes in the comfort of your own kitchen is one thing, but watching him tug it in real time while you’re camped up in a hotel hundreds of miles away could be viewed, by some parties, as something else entirely.*

Travis clears his throat, wishing he’d thought to grab a water out of the minifridge. “Miss Insta have any specific complaints about your film skills?” 

The camera on Patty’s phone is pointing up at the ceiling while he rustles around out of frame, and Travis has that feeling again— the thrill of watching a slasher flick, wanting to yell about how the killer’s _ right fucking behind you, moron. Why won’t you fucking turn around. _

“Not exactly,” Patty mumbles, and there’s the sound of a drawer sliding open and then shut again. 

“Just a general thumbs down, huh?” Travis grimaces at the empty screen. “Rough.”

“No, jackass, we just haven’t—” The camera angle swoops up, a brilliant second of vertigo before Patty’s face is back. His hood’s fallen away and Travis gets a clear, full view of his shifty expression when he says, “We haven’t, like, FaceTimed yet. Or sent videos, or whatever.” 

Seems like as good a time as any on this little journey to throw up a giant red flag, ask for some detailed clarification on what the hell they’re doing. But there’s this crazy buzz right under Travis’ skin, this nervous tension running straight up his spine, tailbone to brainstem. 

“Practice like you play, huh?” He grins even though he can tell it doesn’t look quite right, what he can see of his own tiny face fully jacked up in the top corner of the screen. 

“Play like you practice,” Patty agrees. He doesn’t look much better than Travis, or he looks way better than Travis— pink-cheeked and over-calm, soft yellow light from his bedside lamp. Travis knows exactly which unwashed Flyers hoodie he’s wearing just from seeing the top tenth of it. There’s a rip inside the pouch pocket; Patty’s phone always falls out when they’re standing in line for breakfast sandwiches.

They stare at each other for a moment, the screen giving this unreal sense of distance and proximity at once. 

“Sooo,” Travis tries, focusing so hard on keeping his voice normal that he forgets to come up with something to say. “Uh, hop to it, huh? I've got practice tomorrow morning out here.”

Patty rolls his eyes, holding something up near his face and lazily shaking it back and forth “I'm not gonna do it by my fucking self, dude. That'd be—”

“If you say weird, I'll climb straight through this phone screen, bud, swear to god—”

“—awkward,” Patty finishes, which is hardly any better. The camera finally focuses in on his prop— a bottle of lotion; Travis flushes hot all over. 

“Fine,” he snaps, so squirrely he's gone irritated. “Let me grab stuff.” He leaves his phone on the bed and ducks into the ensuite, digs through the little freebie amenities (he does love amenities) until he figures out which one's lotion. It'd be easier if his brain wasn't doing the mental equivalent of dirt biking through a junkyard at the moment, but you get what you get with brains. In Travis’ experience. 

When he gets back, he clicks off the biggest lamp so it’s just the little bedside one, less light to be embarrassed by. As Travis settles himself as comfortably as he can against the pillows, it occurs to him that he’s never actually jerked off over the phone before— the one time in Juniors he’d attempted a raunchy Skype session on his laptop, his road roomie had come back from dinner early. Everyone had been very apologetic and nothing had been particularly sexy.

“Hey,” Travis says, picking his phone back up finally and chewing at a corner of his mouth. “I’ve never really been a phone sex guy, so I don’t know if I’ll have a ton of pointers for you.” 

Patty looks severely unimpressed. “Is this you telling me you got cold feet in the time it took to walk to the bathroom and back?”

“No!” It’s not. He doesn’t _ not _ want to do it; he just doesn’t know if he’ll have anything to say, and if he doesn’t— will that make it _ too _ uncomfortable? Like, if they keep pushing, there’s gotta be a line somewhere that turns things from fun weird to bad weird, probably, but Travis feels so _ in it _that he can’t imagine he’s thinking clearly. “I just don’t know how helpful I’ll be.”

There’s this soft huff of breath, a rustle of fabric the line barely picks up. Feels like Travis’ eyes might pop right out of his head with how hard he’s suddenly looking at Patty on the screen. Camera’s still just on his face, but— well, this is what Patty looks like when he’s got a hand on his dick, apparently. Hard to tell if it’s better or worse that he doesn’t look much different. 

“Just need you to tell me if it looks good, man.”

Travis gives his phone the world’s dorkiest thumbs up. “Can do, bud.”

Which is all fine and good, but then Patty must tap the camera flip thing because instead of Patty’s face, Travis is staring at the bunched muscle of Patty’s forearm disappearing into the band of his basketball shorts.

He bites down on his tongue immediately, swallowing down whatever stupid comment is fighting to get out of him. 

“Can you see?” It's fucked up that Patty doesn't sound fucked up. Travis has seen him get embarrassed in a drive-thru when he fumbles his order number; no way should he be chill about _ this. _

Travis swallows, tries to clear his throat as quietly as possible before saying, “Yeah, looks fine.” God, it'd be kind of a blessing if Patty turns out to have a hair trigger. Travis isn't sure how long he can do this without losing his mind. 

The elastic of Patty’s shorts strains when he gives himself an experimental stroke— the black silky material doesn't give much in the way of detail, but even the suggestion fizzes at the base of Travis’ spine.

He jumps when Patty’s voice cuts into his laser-focus. “Are you gonna start anytime soon or should I just pull up porn on my laptop?”

Which is the exact moment Travis understands that this watch party is meant to be a two-way street, that Patty hadn't just demanded he jerk off for his health.

_ Oh fuck, _ he thinks slowly, a trainwreck. Out loud he just laughs, juggles his phone around to get lotion in one palm. He's not the one practicing for the big show here, so he just flips to the back camera and shoves his hand unceremoniously down his sweats. 

“Hot,” Patty nags, which like— Travis did not _ ask_. Not that anyone would _ know _ from the way his stomach flips, a zip of interest straight to his core.

“You're the one in the spotlight, bud.” He says it with a sense of walking the plank, digging his own grave. “Close your eyes and think of Winnipeg if you have to.”

There's a low chuckle and Travis wishes he had his headphones in so he could hear it better. As it is, he has to settle for straining his eyes to follow the leisurely movement of Patty’s arm, quickly thumbing the brightness up so he won't miss anything. 

“Are you gonna keep your shorts on the whole time?” Travis is genuinely curious: it's kind of working for him. Maybe it's like a burlesque thing. 

“No, I'm just—” Patty thinks about it, apparently lands on, “warming up first.” Which probably makes sense— maybe his dick’s shy or like, nervous. After all, Travis only met it briefly in pretty fraught circumstances. The way you take a dog to the vet and then it doesn’t like the dog nurses, even though they’re perfectly nice people. 

“Take your time, man. Not like I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow.” 

Patty grunts, irritated, and in one swooping motion pushes down the band of his shorts, raising his hips to get them past his ass. Travis gets caught for a moment on the elastic biting into the tensed muscle of Patty’s thighs, the half-visible outlines of his stupid tattoos. That shouldn’t be hot, right? It’s just fucking basketball shorts. Travis sees them on any number of dudes on any given day and feels nothing about it. 

By the time his eyes skip back up, Patty’s got his free hand wrapped back around his dick, this loose nothing of a hold that lets Travis _ see_. It's so— if anyone’d asked him before this moment if he had any opinions on like, the aesthetics of dicks, he’d probably’ve laughed a little, begged off with a polite _ nah. _Like, sure, sometimes in porn a particularly bogus dick will be the dealbreaker, but that's just— you know. Maybe he still doesn't really have opinions; maybe it's just an objectively good dick. He's not a dick scientist. 

“Looks good,” Travis says, because that's what he's here for. Feedback.

Patty’s fist tightens, squeezing down near the base. “Yeah?” His voice is so deep Travis wants to roll around in it. He thinks longingly of his headphones again, wants to hear Patty’s soft breathing right in his ears, wants his stupid-low rumbly voice as close as possible.

“You should—” Travis stutters over his words, too focused on following the slick drag of Patty’s hand. “You should talk to her. When you do this.”

If he were in his right mind, he might worry that Patty’d ask _ why_, but Travis is only eyes and ears and the hand on his dick, just grateful when Patty hums low through the phone and says, “Noted.”

There's a gut-level sympathy Travis hadn't expected, this tug at the base of his own spine with each stroke of Patty’s hand. It's instinct when his own rhythm lines up, chasing. 

“Fix your phone,” Patty mumbles, breathless, and Travis realizes he's been so focused on watching Patty that he let his camera wander, broadcasting more hotel wall than jerkoff action. 

“Sorry, sorry.” He centers his camera again, catching sight of the surreal visual of his hand on himself in the corner overlapping the larger view of Patty doing the same. 

It takes coordination Travis doesn't feel like he can possibly possess, but he tries to keep the phone steady. The flashes of red skin through Patty’s fingers, the wetness Travis can _ hear _ when he slides the foreskin over the flushed head— the dissonance of the noise mirrored back here, in his own room. It's all narrowing Travis’ field of focus, pulling at him. 

Travis is surprised he can hear anything over how loud his pulse sounds in his own ears, but his attention is so pared down, just _ Patty, Patty, Patty_, that he catches the change in Patty’s breathing, the small gasp of air before the ragged uptick. Travis’ heart hammers, jaw going slack as he watches Patty’s hand speed up further, his hips shift and roll against the mattress. Travis follows his lead helplessly, eyes wide open to catch the ripple that goes through Patty’s body, the spasm in his thighs and stomach before he starts to come.

With an intensity bordering on pain, Travis realizes what he most wants is to see Patty’s _ face _ for this part— everything from his burning cheeks to the fucking little gap between his teeth; Travis wants it in a way that feels more like physical thirst than sexual interest. It makes his mouth dry, his tongue thick. 

He hisses out a poorly-stifled _fuck! _when he comes, forgetting the camera entirely and bringing his phone-bearing hand up to bite at his wrist, a doomed attempt to keep himself some semblance of quiet. 

Afterwards, for just a moment, it’s only him and the blood rushing in his ears, no Patty sounds, no visual input. The peace gives him enough time to think, and all he can think is _ uh-oh_.

* * *

*

> [...] friends are like magic tricks
> 
> but love is genuinely pulling someone in half.

– Catie Rosemurgy, from "Doctor: Miss Peach Is A Doll Inside A Doll Inside A Doll"


	4. Chapter 4

All of his peaceful fishing dreams have gone Patty-shaped. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not helpful, either: he needs to go a few hours without thinking: _ Patty! _but he can't even manage it while he's asleep.

* * *

Travis is in the middle of a pretty sick play-by-play of a deep sea fishing show he binged over the summer when Patty says, “Have you ever done anal?” out of nowhere and Travis trips over recounting a particularly gruesome scaling mishap in favor of choking on his tongue.

“Dude, _ what_?” he asks, arms still raised above his head to pantomime gutting a marlin. 

Patty doesn't look up from his phone; if anything, he looks harder, like he's trying to crack the screen with his eyes. 

Sometimes Travis says _ what _when people ask him things whether he heard them or not, just to give his brain a second to catch up. This is not one of those times. He legitimately needs Patty to repeat himself because he's about a thousand percent sure he misheard. “No, really,” he says, finally remembering to let his arms drop. “What?”

“It's not weird,” Patty says, all defensive and yep, there go his shoulders, right up to his ears. 

Travis groans and collapses back against his arm of the couch. “I didn't _ say _ it was weird, I just thought I mighta heard you wrong since we've literally _ never _talked about any kind of—”

Patty’s head swivels on some _ Exorcist _ shit; the sudden, violently direct eye contact is unsettling. “Yeah, Travis, it would be so fucking weird for us to have an awkward, personal conversation.” He’s looking at Travis the same way he looked at his phone and Travis feels sorry for it. “Just seemed like maybe there wasn't much call for secrets or whatever anymore.” Patty’s red as fuck, looks like he wants to sink into the couch cushions and disappear, but he's trying to make a joke and it _ does _make Travis laugh.

“Alright.” Travis claps his hands and rubs his palms together hard, starting a fake fire. “Giving or taking?”

Patty rears back as if Travis just took a swing at him. “Dude, _ what_?” 

Travis cannot stand him. “You _ just said _it’s not weird—”

“It’s _ not_, I just— giving, obviously! Or like,” he flounders, visibly thrown and casting around. “Getting, too? I don’t know, I’m just asking a question, you don’t have to turn it into a whole thing—”

“I’ve only been the doer.”

“Then why did you even _ ask— _”

Travis scoffs. “Jesus, Pat, I was trying to be _ inclusive_.” If Patty’s face is anything to go by, he wants nothing more than for Travis to keel over this instant, so Travis does them both a favor and pushes this disaster of a conversation along. “Why, what’s up?"

At least Patty re-aims his eat-shit glare back down at his phone, swiping across the black screen with his thumb as if Travis can’t see he’s not doing anything. “So that girl from Insta—”

“Think we can safely call her a woman, bud, but continue—”

“_Anyway_, she mentioned meeting up when the team’s in New York next week and she’s super into it apparently.” His voice keeps getting lower as he goes along and Travis sympathizes suddenly with people who ask for subtitles in movies. He’s leaning halfway across the couch to catch the words by the time Patty gets to, “But she said she doesn’t do it with anyone who hasn’t like, done it first. Like—” If he were hooked up to some kind of machine documenting volume, Travis is pretty sure the next words would look like someone flatlining on one of those heart monitors in hospital rooms. “—had it done.”

“Huh,” Travis says, rubbing at the back of his neck while he thinks it over. “I guess I can see where she’s coming from. Too bad, man.”

Patty doesn’t say anything, which Travis takes as tacit permission to return to his awesome fishing reenactment. 

* * *

It’s not until a full day of Patty’s masterful cold shouldering later that Travis connects the dots there. Being frozen out is a pain in the ass when all he wants to do is be bros and not think about how much this has all fucked up his personal ability to just think like Patty’s bro. Also, he’d really like Patty to develop some new coping mechanism that isn't just _ retreating into his shell like a huge bastard turtle. _He even considers stomping up to Patty after practice, yelling some wild shit, “Dude, were you asking me to fuck you?” because, like, dude. 

But the thing about Patty is, shell aside, he's kind of a softie. He hates being embarrassed more than almost anyone Travis has ever met, and Travis maybe kind of embarrassed him already, even if it wasn't on purpose. Patty gets in his own head so much sometimes: there's a good chance he doesn't know that _ Travis _didn't know what he was angling for. If he was angling for it. 

Honestly, Travis expected the NHL to be less like a soap opera than Juniors, which in retrospect was stupid of him. He's missing shots left and right lately. And before he stomps up to Patty anywhere, public or private, he needs to think about this one. Sometimes he catches sight of Patty in the locker room— not even naked, not even doing anything particularly devastating, and Travis’ hands still flex on instinct, itching after him. If Patty’s asking for like, literal bone-down sex, there’s a _ chance _Travis doesn’t walk away from that one fully unscathed. 

Maybe he should talk to someone. 

* * *

There are dudes on the team way older than Travis, dudes with way more relationship experience, but this problem requires a certain touch that Travis just can’t picture Jakub Voracek doling out with the care and consideration it requires. World’s most open secret is Cartz and Beezer’s Extravagant Wine Nights. 

(Actually, he’d asked Jake already: granted, it was after a road loss; granted, he’d talked around the issue so vaguely he’d confused even himself by the end of it; granted, Jake was a bottle and a half of cheap bubbly deep in his own hotel room about it by the time Travis sauntered in. He tucked away Jake’s advice anyway— a hiccup and a half-slurred “Fuck ‘im.”— for later, to be reconsidered after taking consensus of a broader, somewhat soberer range of opinions.)

So he shows up to Wine Night early, fancy little wine bag in hand. He picked the bottle with the ugliest label because it seemed the most expensive. Not in dollars, but in personality. 

He is like, crazy nervous. 

Beezer finally opens the door after what’s gotta be a full two minutes of Travis just standing outside like a dweeb. His hat’s on sideways and his eyes are even droopier than usual, so maybe Travis misjudged how early exactly Wine Night might start.

“Did Carter invite you?” Bee asks, sounding genuinely confused, and Travis mentally stumbles.

“Uhhhh... no?” He did not even consider that Wine Night could operate on an invite-only basis. 

Bee catches sight of the bag of wine in Travis’ hand and his whole face lights up— slowly, but it happens. “Oh, sweet. Come in, man.”

Travis follows him in, toeing off his shoes inside the door, but also— “Dude, fuck you, were you not gonna let me in?” And also— “Is that a silk robe?”

Bee glances down at his own body like he’d forgotten it was attached to him. “Oh, yeah. Wine Night, you know.” He shrugs, turning around and heading towards the kitchenette thing attached to the living room, doubling back to lazily snatch the wine tote right out of Travis’ hand. 

“Oh, cool.” Travis ends up leaning against the kitchen counter while Bee digs around in the cabinets and fridge, carefully arranging cheese and crackers and fruit on a gold-edged glass serving tray. “Do you have an extra one?” Travis asks after a minute.

Bee doesn’t look up from his masterclass on apple slicing but he does grin. “Text Carter.”

Ten minutes later, Travis is wrapped up in a silky robe about two sizes too big for him, chilling on the couch and half-watching Bee and Carter argue in the kitchen about shit Travis doesn’t understand. Carter’s robe is fluffy, and if Travis’d known fluffy robes were on offer he might’ve made a special request. Still, the silk one feels nice when he runs his fingers over it, and Carter did cut short what is apparently usually an epic-length bath just to bring it out to him. He’ll live.

“_Ugh_,” Bee groans loud as shit, and Travis jumps a little where he’d been not thinking about much and just feeling the smooth silky sleeves of his robe. “_Travis Konecny_.”

“Joel—” Carter starts, at about the same time Travis says, “Wuh?”

Bee’s pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand, holding up the bottle of wine Travis brought with the other. “You defaced this institution. You disrespected this time-honored tradition.”

“Hush,” Carter admonishes, grabbing the wine from Bee and shooing him out of the kitchen, giant snack platter in hand. “He doesn’t know any better.”

Travis is absolutely lost, doesn't even know what he doesn't know better about. He scooches over on the couch so Bee has more room to flop down beside him after gently placing the mound of snacks on the coffee table. “What did I do?”

Bee just says, “_Ugh_,” again, reaching for a cracker and precisely layering slices of apple and cheese on top. 

Carter swoops into the sitting area, three wine glasses in hand and three bottles under his arm. He tells Bee to stop being dramatic in that eat-shit-and-die voice he gives to reporters once in a freak moon, then gives Travis a mournful look and says, “But really, Teeks, chardonnay? Is this your great aunt’s funeral?” 

“Oh my god,” Bee cuts in, “wait, _ did _someone die? Why are you here?”

Carter scoffs where he’s fucking around with the glasses. “You didn’t even ask why he came?”

“I was _ busy— _” Bee gestures at the snacks with the most energy he’s shown all night, “making the spread.”

“It looks great,” Travis offers, then, before he has a chance to think about it, “I think Patty asked me to fuck him.” And then, because Patty will kill him, fucked or unfucked, if that ever leaves this room, “Sacred wine night code of silence.”

He’s not sure what he’s expecting— someone to spit whatever they’re drinking halfway across the room, maybe— but there’s no major reaction. Bee and Carter just freeze, Carter pausing a beat too long where he’s pouring wine into one of the glasses and letting it slosh out onto the table. He notices quickly, straightening the bottle and setting it down with a heavy _ thunk_.

Bee sounds impatient when he prompts, “And you said?”

Travis scratches the back of his neck, nervous now. “I didn’t... I wasn’t sure he was asking. But now I think maybe—”

“Here,” Carter cuts him off, shoving the over-full wine glass into Travis’ chest. He hands Bee a glass as well and then settles onto the couch, one arm draped along the back behind Travis’ head. “Why don’t you start at the beginning.” 

Travis takes a deep breath and then, at Bee’s insistence, a deep drink, and starts back at the beginning. It takes... a while, especially with Bee interrupting in distress at even the vaguest description of the waxing and Carter dropping cryptic _ hmm _’s that he refuses to expand upon until Travis has gotten them up to the present. 

“I _ was _wondering who mowed his lawn,” Bee admits at the end, reaching out to pour himself another glass. “I guess that makes as much sense as anything else.”

Travis doesn’t know if he agrees with that, but before he’s got a chance to protest, Carter’s asking, “And this girl lives in New York?” which is not what Travis was expecting after everything else he said.

“Yeah? In the city, I think.”

“And yet,” Carter says, slow and careful, but that might be the two glasses of wine he’s primly horked down while Travis talked, “he’s never met her.”

“I mean,” Travis says, feeling a little defensive of Patty, “not yet. He wants to be ready. Like, he wants it to be good.” 

“The train to NYC’s like ninety minutes,” Bee points out, which is not—

“That’s not the point, it’s not time, it’s—”

“You,” Carter finishes, eyebrows raised in a way that feels pointedly auntish and judgmental, like Travis is being purposely obtuse. Which he’s _ not_, because if he was trying to ignore it— whatever _ it _is— he wouldn’t even be here right now. Wine makes him sleepy. 

“_No_,” he argues, mostly for the sake of arguing. He touches his robe again, focusing on the silky feeling under his fingers instead of how weird he feels. “Or like, I don’t know. But if he wants that—”

“You,” Bee reminds him unhelpfully.

“—then I don’t get why it’s gotta be so...” God, what’s the word he wants. His brain’s fuzzy. 

“Convoluted,” Carter offers.

“Labyrinthine,” Bee amends. 

Travis shakes his head, laughing a little. “Fucked up.”

He’s startled when Bee makes a triumphant noise, pointing at Travis with one hand and downing his remaining wine with the other before announcing, “It’s Patty.”

Travis has barely opened his mouth to retort when Carter’s pulling the forgotten wine glass from Travis’ hand and saying, “It _ is _Nolan,” in this apologetic way that gets right under Travis’ skin. 

“I like Pats,” Travis grumps, feeling churlish and irritated with them both. He wants to dramatically shrug his robe off and bolt but he’s too comfy where he’s sunk into the couch between them. 

Bee snorts.“Yeah, that’s the whole damn problem.”

* * *

He texts Patty _ you up? _ and laughs when he gets back _ seriously? _ right away. Spends a minute hunting down the little eggplant emoji and slaps on a few question marks for good luck. Only has to wait a few minutes for Patty to text back _ come over. _

When he lets himself in, he's prepared to trounce right up the stairs to Patty’s room, but the light shining through the kitchen door catches him first. He chances a peek through the doorway— if it's Kevin, he's got absolutely zero idea what he's meant to say— and finds Patty leaning with his back to the kitchen counter, staring down at the label of a water bottle as if he's reading it from a planet away. 

“They change the recipe?” 

Patty startles, muscles contracting almost imperceptibly before he cuts his eyes to Travis and relaxes all at once. He says, “Hey,” and it's so warm that Travis has to hold onto the countertop for a second before he can smile back.

“So,” Travis starts, “I think maybe you were trying to ask me for something and I didn't really get it.”

Patty looks back down at his water bottle, thumbing at the corner of the label. He's radiating discomfort and embarrassment, but Travis does his best to radiate something positive back— interest, friendship, attraction, whatever. He just wants something to stick.

“So I've done it twice,” Travis continues without prompting, because he knows Nolan Patrick pretty well and he knows uncomfortable conversations aren't his strong suit. “One time it went really well, and one time it did _ not. _”

Patty's whole face unfreezes, shooting Travis a disgusted look. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“You've gotta be into it, I think, and like, comfortable— relaxed.” He glances meaningfully at Patty’s stiff posture. “The time it went bad—” Travis grimaces at the memory. “We didn't talk about it enough. We rushed into things.”

Patty’s looking at him from the corner of his eye, trying to look like he's not hanging on every word. “What happened?”

“Got a concussion,” Travis admits. He talks over Patty’s squawked disbelief, “Didn't do enough prep, lost my balance and kind of slipped in on accident?” Yikes. “It apparently hurt pretty bad and she knocked me off the bed— head went straight into her nightstand.” He taps his right temple, remembering the awful... everything. “Brutal. Puked on her rug.”

Patty's staring at him open-mouthed and horrified. “_Dude, _ what the _ fuck?” _

Travis tries not to laugh at him and fails miserably. “I'm just saying: if I read things right and that's what you're asking— you gotta talk to me. She was about my size, bud; if you pull that same shit, I'm gonna end up in a full body cast.”

They stare at each other for what must be a full minute. Travis feels like a cartoon character who ran off a cliff, like he's standing on air and waiting to fall. 

It breaks when Patty pushes away from the counter and ducks into the fridge, resurfacing with a second water bottle that he holds out like a peace offering. Travis isn't particularly thirsty, but he takes it anyway, hyperaware of the way Patty lets their fingers meet on the bottle, doesn't let go right away. 

“I'll talk to you.” Patty’s voice is soft, barely a rumble in his chest, but he's meeting Travis’ eye. 

_ And what about the other part? _ Travis could probably ask. _ What about wanting it? _But Patty’s grown. Whatever reason he has for doing things— he gets to make up his own mind, just like Travis. 

Travis pulls the water bottle away from him and smiles down at it, too fucked up to control his face. “Yeah, bud? Gonna tell me how I'm doing?” 

He can see Patty’s bare feet sticking out the bottom of his too-short sweats, the way his toes curl against the tile before he says, “Yeah, I'll tell you.” 

* * *

It’s starting to feel like a habit, tiptoeing upstairs to Patty’s room for illicit nonsense. Travis knows which stairs groan, which floorboards creak— he wonders if it's information he actually needs or just something that'll end up uselessly jangling around his head some nights when he can't get to sleep. Like, _ remember that month you fucked around with Patty? Skipped the fifth step, kept near the right wall so you wouldn't wake up Kevin? What was up with that? _

“Did you change your bed?” It's definitely not the same comforter from when they did the waxing or even the FaceTime call; Travis would know since both scenes are seared into his brain forever.

Patty looks unimpressed even as he strips his hoodie off. “It's called doing laundry, freak, maybe you should try it.” But his cheeks are warming up, Travis can see it from over here and he can't keep the grin off his face.

“Fuck that, bud, you were trying to make it nice for me!” It's so stupid, Travis feels like crowing. “That's sweet, man, I'm touched.” Maybe if he liked how red Patty got less, he’d feel worse about making him blush.

Patty dissolves into irritated silence, testy in the way he tosses his clothes around and moodily throws himself onto the freshly laundered sheets. _ Like a cat you pet backwards_, Travis thinks fondly, trying and failing to temper the way he's smiling to himself as he shrugs his shirt off.

There’s lube on the bedside table and Travis is gratified to see it’s just the regular KY shit from any convenience store. If it were anything fancier, he might start to worry Patty’d been freaking out about this or like, planning ahead. 

“We marathoning this, or you get a headstart?” Travis knees up onto the mattress, close enough to run a hand over the coarse hair on Patty’s shin. 

Patty rolls his eyes, stretching out long and lean against the sheets so his boxers ride down, a peekshow at the bare patch above his dick. “You asking if I did the work for you? Gonna start calling you Shortcut.” 

Travis grins, trailing a hand up Patty’s leg until he's fingering the stitching of Patty’s inseam, pulling just enough to get his attention. “It's got a ring to it. These comin’ off?” 

Patty stares up at him for a long second, chewing at his bottom lip; he’ll leave teeth marks and Travis won't be able to stop looking at them, same old game. “You first.” 

It's a surprise, but Patty’s full of surprises lately. Travis is more than happy to comply, shimmying his shorts off and kicking them gleefully off to the side. He strikes a quick pose just to make Patty laugh, hands on his hips, superhero shit. It has the desired effect, startles a snort out of him— Travis can track the way his body relaxes into the laughter, tension draining from Patty’s jaw, his shoulders. Nice.

He tugs at Patty’s boxers again and this time Patty lifts his hips, helps Travis push them down and pull them off. 

Weirdest time to think about Bee saying he’d wondered about who mowed Patty’s lawn, but Travis feels all cat-and-canary about it suddenly, delighted chorus of _ me, me, me! _through his head as he finally gets another up-close look. 

It looks pretty fucking good, if he does say so himself, even now when Patty’s only at a curious half-chub. Yet another thing for Travis to take care of, and he does love taking care of things.

“Take a picture, man,” Patty gripes, hand creeping down the sheets like he's planning on covering himself up.

“Already sent me some,” Travis points out, sticking his tongue out for good measure. He stretches over Patty to reach the lube on the table, flipping the cap open and spilling some into his palm. “Alright,” he drops the bottle beside Patty’s hip, “spread ‘em.”

Patty groans, hiding his face in the crook of his elbow. “You're such a _ dork_.” Travis wonders if he's going to hide his face the whole time; he hopes not. He’d like to see it.

The people Travis has done this with in the past, they’d been pretty well acquainted beforehand, but Travis guesses the exact disgusted tilt of Patty’s mouth before he even gets his slicked fingers pressed up against him. Every time he starts to worry this’ll go off the rails, Patty does something so _ Patty _that it’s impossible to feel out of place. 

“You gotta relax, bud.” Travis tries to say it in his most soothing, least irritating voice. Patty’d tensed up like something stung him the second Travis started poking around the important bits, and that won’t do either of them any good. “Can’t really afford another concussion.”

Huffed little laugh, Patty’s thighs easing up where they’d been squeezing at Travis like a balloon that needed popping. “Feels weird,” Patty mumbles, and Travis is nice enough not to point out that like, yeah. 

“Upside, it’ll probably feel better than ripping all the hair off your ass?” 

Patty laughs again, groans a little _ fuck _through it before saying, “Okay, okay. How’d you like— when you did this before, how’d this part work? How’d she relax, the time you didn’t end up in the hospital?”

The back of Travis’ neck goes hot and he rubs his face against his shoulder, unexpectedly bashful. “Uh, I...” He considers miming it, v-ing his fingers in front of his face and sticking his tongue out just to keep Patty laughing and loose, but Travis can barely look up from where he’s just languidly trailing a palm over the inside of Patty’s thigh. 

“_Oh_,” Patty says after a few seconds, rumbled right from the center of his chest. “Huh.” He shifts against the sheets, knocking a knee against Travis’ side. “Makes sense.”

Travis sucks in a breath through his nose, glancing up at Patty— red from his forehead down to his chest. His gaze gets caught on Patty’s nipples, tight skin all pebbled up. It’s such a small thing when the entirety of Patty’s body is laid out in front of him, but that’s what makes Travis’ mouth go wet, his jaw slack. 

“I could,” Travis says, ears burning when he hears the spit swamping his own words. “Like, if you’re—”

“No, yeah.” One of Patty’s hands drifts up to his own chest, squeezing at his pec like he’s followed the line of Travis’ attention. “That’s— yeah. Go for it.”

Getting down on his belly between Patty’s spread legs, close enough to feel the heat from Patty’s skin— it makes Travis’ cheeks warm. He takes a second to scrub his face against the smooth skin of Patty’s hip, ignoring the surprised burst of a sigh Patty lets out, the mumbled, “_Fucking beard tickles_.” 

It’s gratifying that Patty’s dick’s already on board, foreskin rolled away from the flushed head so Travis doesn’t need a hand to steady anything, can keep the fingers of one hand pressed lightly to Patty’s ass and his other fist clenched in the sheets to ground himself while he chases down Patty’s dick with just his mouth. Probably looks ridiculous but he can’t even think about it, too caught up in the feeling of velvety skin against his tongue. 

Wild how fast Patty gets into it, heavy breaths through his nose, hips squirming against the mattress. Travis’ fingertip slips in without much effort, only sign Patty notices at all is an interested hum, the hand he gets on Travis’ head, pushing his hair away from where it’s fallen in his face. 

Patty’s breathless when he gasps out, “Did you Wikihow this, too?” 

If Travis’ mouth weren’t busy, he’d grin. He shoulders Patty’s legs a little wider, getting in closer so he can work at fitting more in his mouth— it’s sloppy, all that spit and the bitter-salt taste only making it worse. Probably for the best: he doesn’t know where the lube got tossed, can’t imagine breaking away to look for it; pretty much just Scouts to use the wetness sliding down the crook of Patty’s groin to re-slick his own fingers, pressing back in with two. 

Patty grunts at the feeling but stays easy, stroking methodically at Travis’ hair like he’s mirroring the way Travis’ fingers are moving in him, steady. Time goes fucked up, like— Travis could stay here all night, just listening to Patty breathe and swear under his breath, getting lost in the feel of Patty hot in his mouth and hotter around his fingers, all the sensations mixed up and backwards.

He’s shocked out of it when Patty gives one harsh tug on his hair, says, “_Trav_,” in this frustrated tone like he’s maybe said it a few times already. Travis pulls away, sucking in air and feeling his lungs burn, his jaw ache in protest—

“Wuh?” he asks, chest still heaving, and Patty’s looking at Travis in this way that makes his stomach drop, his dick jerk where it’s pressed into the comforter. 

“Think that’s good, bud,” Patty says, reaching for Travis’ face— Travis isn’t sure what he’s going to do, push him away? But Patty just sweeps a thumb below Travis’ bottom lip, wiping at the sticky mess. It hits Travis harder than he’d've expected, a flood of soft feeling that leaves him boneless enough that it’s easy for Patty to roll him, get Travis on his back. 

Patty’s joking aside, Travis _ did _pretty much WikiHow this, enough to know it’d probably be easier for Patty if he weren’t on top. But Travis still feels fuzzy, light-headed while he watches Patty tear open a condom packet with his teeth (such a fucking Patty move; it restores Travis’ brain function by about twenty percent), get a big hand around Travis’ dick and work the condom down with only a little trouble. 

Travis is slack-jawed through the whole thing; he wants to help but he’s too struck by Patty’s huge body looming over him, the singular focus on Patty’s face and the determined set of his brow when he kneels over Travis, eases himself down in fits and starts. 

Wind sprints, uphill. Craziest conditioning Travis has ever felt, like doing the fucking VO2 bike test and trying not to nut at the same time. He wants to let Patty in on the joke but he can’t get his tongue in order, can’t stop breathing like his lungs are about to give out. 

Absolute out of body experience when Patty says, “_Hush_,” and puts fingers up to Travis’ mouth, two of them slipping in on a ragged inhale. “Trying to concentrate.” 

Travis tongues at Patty’s fingers, centered by the salty skin taste, watches Patty work his body down until they’re ass to hip. The little pleased sound Patty lets out, a self-satisfied musical note. He pulls his fingers free from Travis’ mouth and rolls his hips experimentally, like he’s curious about the feeling.

That noise again, softer— victorious little hum when he settles himself into a slow rhythm. Travis gets his hands on Patty’s thighs, over his tattoos as if he’ll feel anything but the bunch and give of the muscles. It gets Patty’s attention anyway, glancing down to Travis’ hands spread over him then quickly up to his face. 

Just for this one crazy second, he thinks Patty might— might kiss him. It's so hard to say: Travis is being pulled in a hundred different directions, overwhelmed by every place they're touching, but he’d swear Patty was staring at his mouth, pupils blown intense, his own lips parted in a rough mirror to the way Travis can't seem to stop panting heavily. 

No warning, Patty lurches forward and a desperate frisson surges through Travis, hands sliding up to Patty’s hips and fingertips convulsing on his sweat-slicked skin, toes curling against the mattress when Patty’s shadow swamps him, unsteady breath fanning over Travis’ face. It's so _ close— _ Travis wants to say _ do it _ or _ please, _ but he can't get it together before Patty skips right over his mouth, lips skimming across Travis’ cheek, his jaw. 

The gasp Travis lets out is high, shocked; he feels the unexpected heat of Patty’s tongue on his neck like a burn, tries to twist away from it even as his hips cant up sharply in response. 

“Pat,” he tries, because this is not sustainable and he doesn't know if Patty can't tell or if he's on board for where they're headed. “Pat, I'm gonna—” 

It has the opposite of the intended effect: Patty doubles up his effort, shoving back harder onto Travis’ dick and tightening a hand in Travis’ hair to keep his head turned, keep him from rolling away from Patty’s mouth on his shoulder, his neck, his ear— Travis bites down on his tongue when he comes, eyes squeezed shut against the onslaught of sensation. Patty’s so fucking big, so heavy— the instinctual stutter and roll of Travis’ hips up into his body gets him nowhere, this frustrating feeling that guts him, tears his teeth out of his tongue so he has to vocalize it, this thready _ fuck _ with barely any breath behind it. 

It lasts for fucking _ ever, _ and he has to deal with the devastating reality of still being _ inside _ Patty when he comes back to himself. It _ hurts_, it's a _ lot; _the crushing weight of Patty on top of him is grounding and good and he doesn't want to lose it.

“Here,” Travis slurs, tongue throbbing from his teeth, a little tinge of metal in his mouth. He knocks away the hand Patty still has wrapped around his own dick, grimacing against the tremor each of his clumsy strokes sends through Patty’s body. 

His face goes so intent, eyes closed, all lashes and the heavy line between his brows; Travis has never seen someone’s jaw go tense and slack at once, but he can see the wet glint of Patty’s tongue poking at his lower lip, chasing. 

Travis thinks about kissing him, about almost kissing him— there's still a slick of spit cooling on his neck from Patty’s mouth, and it wouldn't be that fucking hard or that fucking crazy to just—

Patty comes with a stifled _ ah _hissed through his bared teeth, and Travis screws up his face against the way everything goes vice-tight on his oversensitive dick, fights to keep his eyes pried to catch the way Patty moves through it. To see his face this time, the devastated pinch of his brow like he has to think himself through it.

It's a relief when Patty slumps off him, landing on the mattress with a muted _ thump _ that shakes the bed. 

Travis runs his hands over his face, then curiously drops one to his stomach where he can feel the streaks of come drying. Patty’s. If they're ever going to reach that breaking point of things going bad-weird, seems like this should be the line. He makes sure Patty's not looking before he pulls the condom off and drops it onto the floor; he’ll totally take care of it later, eighty years from now when he can stand up again.

“Thought you were gonna talk me through it, bud,” Travis says finally. The soft noise of the two of them catching their breath is nice, but he's teetering on some kind of edge here and he’d like to be knocked one way or the other just to know where he'll land. 

He's not expecting Patty to laugh so he's helpless against the grin it puts on his face. “Fuck you, I talked—”

“At the beginning!”

“I didn't think—” Patty stops, clears his throat. Travis glances over quickly to see his cheeks glowing, looking a little embarrassed as he holds careful eye contact with the ceiling. “It seemed like you knew what you were doing. It was good.” 

A shot straight to the pleasure center of Travis’ brain, full-body warm. He feels goofy. “Thanks, Pat, means a lot.” 

“Dude, shut up,” Patty mumbles, that way he does when he's trying so hard not to smile that he can't even talk right. 

Travis rolls onto his side to face him fully, nestling further into the nice-as-fuck pillow that's all Patty-smell. Tired as he is, he's buzzing with questions: wants to know what it was like, what he liked about it, comments, concerns, suggestions. It feels like they did something important that should've been scary— like training camp, where your career’s on the line but you meet people who turn the whole thing into a good time. 

Patty’s fading, eyes closed already and chest rising and falling steady and sure. Travis should leave him to it, but he just... the one question he can't push down. “You feel ready?” He's genuinely curious, but he can't help but smile at how stupid it is, rubbing his face against the pillow to hide it. “Now that you've learned from the master and all.”

He wonders if he waited too long, if Patty really fell asleep— but then he's moving around, sliding under the comforter and tugging at the part Travis is still lying on until he rolls off and then crawls under as well. 

“Think so,” Patty says, yawning right in Travis’ face. He's so gross; Travis likes him so much.


	5. Chapter 5

In the morning, Travis stumbles down to the kitchen to scrounge for breakfast and runs directly into Kevin. Kevin had not entered his mind a single time last night, for reasons Travis considers understandable, but he does in retrospect wonder how thick the walls and floors might be. There’s an excited slant to Kevin’s eyebrows that makes Travis think: not thick enough, probably.

“Moooorning,” Kevin practically sings. There must be a dozen eggs in the frying pan he's scooting around on the stove and Travis’ stomach rumbles. 

Deception has never been Travis’ strong suit. If he weren’t starving, he'd have waited for Patty to wake up and sent him downstairs first to do a Kevin Sweep. _ Ifs and buts_, admonishes his mom in the back of his head, and she's right, as usual.

“Morning, man,” Travis considers bolting, but that would probably look worse. He settles on one of the barstools at the kitchen island and desperately casts around for something to distract Kevin before things go sideways. “Uh,” he starts, at exactly the same time Kevin says, “Soooo.”

Travis reaches for a smoke bomb. “I went to wine night!”

Whatever Kevin was getting ready to say visibly falls right out of his head. “What? They invited you to wine night?” The eggy spatula he's holding drips goop onto the floor when his hands go to his hips.

God, Travis sucks so bad at lying, especially when he's hungry and still recovering from a physically and emotionally fraught hook-up. “Yef,” he fumbles, caught in a weird no-man’s land between _ yeah! _ and _ for sure! _

Doesn't matter: Kevin misses the slip, whirling back to face the stove. “Huh,” he says, in a way that sounds like _ how dare they and also you. _Travis is stuck between breathing a sigh of relief and feeling kinda bad about hurting Kev’s feelings. A few awkward minutes pass with just the sound of the spatula scraping eggs around the frying pan, but Kev’s Kev so he eventually, grudgingly asks, “How was it?”

Travis’ entire brain whites out for like, thirty full seconds before he realizes Kevin probably means _ wine night _ and not _ balls-deeping Patty. _“We wore robes.”

Kev squints over his shoulder like he thinks Travis might be jerking him around. “Like...wizards?”

“No, like... spa shit. Fancy bathrobes.” Travis can’t hide the note of longing in his voice; they were comfy. Maybe he’ll buy himself one?

He gets distracted from his robe fantasies by the smell of burning eggs and Kevin hissing _ ah fuck. _Kevin clicks off the stove and pokes at the unappetizingly solid mass in the pan, then he turns on Travis, brandishing the spatula. “Breakfast?”

“Yes,” Travis says dutifully, “thank you.”

With some effort, Kevin manages to scrape servings of eggs onto two plates, using the spatula to chip away at where the blackened bottoms stuck to the pan. “That’s the flavor,” Kevin explains, sliding one of the plates in front of Travis with a little flourish. He tosses Travis a fork before settling down across from him and staring sadly down at his own pile of breakfast. “Robes, huh?”

Travis bravely shoves a forkful in his mouth. “Silk,” he explains through his mouthful, and Kevin makes a mournful noise in response. 

* * *

Travis is still trying to rescue the frying pan, scrubbing away at the sink when Patty stumbles into the kitchen a bit later, wearing the same clothes from last night. He’s still got pillow marks on his face and he looks fit to spit, eyebrows knitted right into a pissy little knot. 

When he spots Travis, his face smooths out, bitchy forehead wrinkle melting away. He says, “Hey,” with a little grin, like Travis didn’t wake up next to him this morning. Or like he did. 

Travis has to turn his attention back to the sink where the water’s started scalding his hands. “Kevin left you breakfast,” he apologizes.

“Shit.” Travis listens to the sounds of Patty scraping around a fork through the plate of cold, burnt eggs around and tries not to laugh. “Do you think he’ll notice if I trash them?”

Unfortunately for Patty, Travis remembers the attentive way Kevin watched him chew and swallow each bite. “I think he’ll check.”

“Fuck,” Patty grumbles. Then something that sounds like a dog hacking up, and Travis turns the water off so he can watch Patty let an unchewed mouthful of eggs drop into the trashcan. “Fuck, you _ ate _these?” 

“I’m a good friend,” Travis says, and Patty shoots him a quick look, eyes darting around Travis’ face like Travis is the one with gross bits of egg on his chin. “And they hadn’t been sitting out for an hour,” he adds as an afterthought. He taps his own chin to get Patty to wipe his face.

“I’ll just take the fucking trash out, I guess.” Patty bangs the plate on the edge of the trashcan until the eggs sadly slide off and land in the garbage with an incongruously solid thump. Once he’s tied up the bag, he pauses before slinging it over his shoulder. “Thought you left, man.” 

Travis is glad he’s leaning against the counter; the change in topic and tone makes his knees feel funny. He stares at Patty who stares right back— he’s wearing his fucking face-off look, that impenetrable nothing-going-on-here facade, challenging tilt to his chin like Travis is some asshole defenseman with a Penguin on his chest. It gets his hackles up, same as always. “Would that’ve been a problem?” 

Patty shrugs, because of course he does. “Just didn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d do,” he says, dropping his attention back to the trash bag and fucking with the tie like it magically decided to loosen itself in the last minute. “Didn’t take you for a hit it and quit it kind of guy.”

Travis mouths _ hit it and quit it _to himself in full disbelief while Patty finally divests the trashcan of its bag. He doesn’t feel irritated anymore, but he does feel fucking weird, buzzy and nervous. “I’m still here, aren’t I?” 

No telling how Patty will ever take anything— his face warms, softens. “Yeah. Can we get real breakfast?”

Whiplash recently, trying to understand what they’re doing. “You take the trash out before Kevin comes out here to check and I’ll start the car.”

* * *

_ emergency wine night!!!! _

Travis sends the text the second he steps back into his own apartment, collapsing facedown on the couch and holding his breath while he listens for the _ bzzz _ of a reply. It takes hardly any time, because Carter’s a pretty decent guy. Travis has the vague sense that Bee and Carter have been waiting for something like this; sometimes when either of them catch his eye in the locker room while he’s just talking to Patty, they look like crisis medics on standby. 

_ **Hartsy** _

_ If you can host, we can be there in an hour. _

Travis sends a thumbs up and spares a glance for the grubby state of the living room. It’s not _ dirty, _but his mind’s been elsewhere for a while; he definitely let it slip. He rolls off the couch and half-heartedly tidies and vacuums, which at least gives him something to do besides panic about what the fuck he’s even going to say once his crash team show up. 

Travis is so engrossed in trying to figure out which cabinets all Sanny’s washed dishes go in that he doesn’t even hear the front door open, only snaps out of it when Bee catches his attention by waving a huge bottle of red from the doorway.

“This is nice,” Carter says, touching the _ LIVE. LAUGH. LOVE. _wooden canvas Travis’ mom gave him for Christmas. He’s shrugging off his coat as he says it, making himself at home, and Travis is a little bummed not to see any robes in tow. 

Beezer sets the wine on the kitchen counter and eyes the painting critically, slurping at the dregs of an iced coffee in a way that feels pointedly judgmental. “Bro, didn’t Hobby Lobby fund ISIS?”

Carter rolls his eyes. “Not on purpose.”

“You’re right, man, that fixes everything.” Beezer shakes the ice at the bottom of his cup for, Travis can only guess, emphasis. 

Travis does not want to cut into what seems like an important conversation, but they are here for a reason and he _ is _crawling out of his skin. He clears his throat and raises his eyebrows when the two of them finally look away from his wall art long enough to remember his presence. “Guys?”

“Oh, right.” Bee hoists himself up onto one of the kitchen counters, pulling out his keys. It takes Travis a minute to realize he’s got a little wine key on the chain, impressed by the foresight when Bee flips it open and grabs the bottle, sets to work freeing the cork. Travis feels momentarily embarrassed that the wine he’d brought last time had a screw top, but he gets over it pretty quick. All tasted the same.

Carter somehow finds the right cabinet for wine glasses on the first try, grabbing three (they're still in bubble wrap from the move, and Travis catches the disparaging look Carter shoots him). “So what's the emergency?” he asks, setting the unwrapped glasses beside Bee and turning to face Travis. 

The two of them squared up at him probably isn't meant to look threatening, but all of Travis’ internal metrics seem to be fritzed lately. 

“I—” _ I what? _Jeez. 

Beezer hands him a dangerously overfilled glass, and Travis downs a few swallows as best he can. It's like sand, saps all the water out of his tongue and leaves his mouth gritty. 

“It's good wine,” Beezer says defensively, which means Travis’ face is probably doing something awful.

“I didn't say it wasn't,” he soothes, forcing down another dry sip and trying to smile through it. A little wine leaks from the corner of his mouth, but Beezer appears placated. 

“Emergency,” Carter reminds them.

Faced with the possibility of advice, stating his problem suddenly seems impossible. It doesn't even feel like a problem anymore; it just feels like a lot. 

“Do you think—” _ Patty likes me? _What, is he thirteen again? Travis flounders, stumbles, chews another mouthful of wine. “Do you think there's any way this wasn't a bad idea? Like, that Pat and I can be— like, can we go back to normal?”

He doesn't miss the furtive look Bee and Carter share, but he chokes down more wine and pretends to ignore it. 

Carter clears his throat delicately, doing the weird teeth-sucking thing with his own wine before swallowing. “What was normal like?”

“Yeah,” Bee cuts in, “what would that even look like?”

Travis balks, swirls the little bit of wine left in his glass just to have something to do with his hands. “I just want... I like when he asks me for help with things. I like hanging out with him.” 

“Did you like _ hanging out _with him, too?” Bee asks, lazy eyebrow wriggle contorting the meaning. 

It's pretty hard to make Travis blush, but he goes warm. “Obviously, but like— like _ you _ said last time, it's Patty, right? It's so hard to tell what _ he _actually wants—”

Beezer does something like a spit-take, getting a little dribble of wine on Travis’ kitchen floor, and Carter snorts into his glass, spraying wine up onto his own forehead. 

“_What_?” Travis demands, irritated by the way they're both clearly trying to stifle laughter in their shoulders and sleeves respectively. 

“Nolan’s not always easy to read,” Carter agrees gently, like he's trying to talk Travis off a ledge, “but—”

“But sometimes he’s lit up like a billboard,” Bee finishes. “And if you're actually worried he's not like, feeling you or whatever—” 

“It just seems sort of ridiculous from the outside,” adds Carter. 

There's a lot to wrestle with there, and Travis needs to think about, needs time to lay out what they're saying and make sense of it. It's entirely possible Patty might... might_ light up_ around Travis sometimes, but Travis is usually too busy being glad to see him to notice. Or even— Patty _ always _looks lit up to him, bright. That's just what he's like.

But Travis still needs to know, needs to ask. “It was just a deal we made, or fell into: that I’d help him with his Instagram lady. And I don't feel like I can keep... helping. The same way.” When Travis swallows, it's embarrassingly audible, throat clicking. “If that's all it is.” 

Bee shrugs. “Deal’s a deal, but you feel what you feel. And you've got to find out if that _is _all it is if you want it to be something else.”

Carter nods thoughtfully. “I know no one wants to hear this advice when it comes to Nolan—”

“But you've just got to talk to him. Just because he's thinking about hooking up with someone else doesn't mean he's not feeling anything about you.” Bee grimaces, eyeing Travis like he's sizing him up. Doesn't necessarily seem like he comes away with a wholly positive opinion about the weighing and measuring. 

“Do you remember—” Carter's looking at Bee instead of Travis, “when you told Nolan his haircut looked nice?”

Bee groans, throwing his arms out so violently the rest of his red splashes right onto the icebox. “Yeah, and he was like—” Bee lowers his voice to a poor approximation of Patty’s rough deadpan, “‘_what haircut.'” _

“Right. And when I asked him if he was feeling alright one day and he—”

“Bit your fucking head off,” Beezer says grimly.

“—_was very rude,_” corrects Carter. He finally looks back at Travis, eyebrows raised like he's tossed down a breadcrumb trail he's worried Travis might be to stupid to follow. “But with you—”

“I don't usually ask if he's okay,” Travis points out, feeling like he's arguing just to be contrary now. “I know he doesn't like it.”

Beezer groans again, louder than ever, and sloshes more wine into his own glass. “You don't _ have _to ask because he lets you baby him! He's always fine when you're there because you always make it fine!” 

It is patently _ untrue _ that Patty is _ always fine _ when Travis is around. But it's maybe not too far off track to say that Travis gets away with some Patty-adjacent things that other people might get snapped at about. Is that the same as lighting up? 

Travis downs the last bit of his wine, bouncing on the balls of his feet. His head feels heavy and buzzy all at once, and he doesn't know if this emergency intervention has really staunched the flow of his nerves. But— “Thanks,” he says anyway, grinning at them both. “We'll see, eh?”

* * *

As a parting gift, Carter had casually suggested a cutback on time spent with Patty until Travis figured himself out. Travis took that advice about as well as their advice to _ just talk to him_. 

“She said kissing’s like, her favorite thing.” Patty’s fucking around with the shirts in his closet, rearranging them on the rack. 

“Okay,” Travis says, feeling a little numb and out of his head about it. Beezer’s voice echoing— _just a_ _90 minute train ride to NYC, man. _Travis wonders if anyone else has spent as much time just sitting on Patty’s bed, hanging around while he goes about his business.

“I don’t know how good I am at it,” Patty goes on, sounding not-quite bored but close. Blue shirt beside blue shirt, shift the green one down a few spaces. Fannypack falls off the top shelf and he grabs it before it hits the ground, shoves it back up into the mess.

It's such a trainwreck moment. Watching Patty’s broad shoulders shift through his shirt while he fucks around and pretends he's not paying attention. Saying it like it's such an easy thing, like it’d be the simplest thing in the world for Travis to give him this, too— and like, it _ should _be. With everything that's already happened, it shouldn't be that goddamn hard. 

This strange swoop in Travis' gut, a full-body prickle. Missing a step going downstairs. The roller coaster heading towards the loop and you notice your seatbelt feels pretty loose.

Travis _ knows _Patty’s asking— going to ask, but he can’t, like... do it. Like, this stand-in thing; Travis had fun, it was hot, but he can’t keep scarecrowing for every throwaway conversation Patty has with his probably-very-nice Insta ladyfriend. There’s sweat breaking out on Travis’ neck, at his hairline. He doesn’t know how he’s going to tell Patty he doesn’t want to do something he actually does _ really _want to do, doesn’t know what reason he can give that won’t make it abundantly clear Travis has gone and made it all fucking weird. Travis can't pretend he doesn't want to kiss Patty or tie his shoes for him or wax his junk or anything else, because he's never been a good liar. Never even been a good half-truther. But he also can't pretend he knows what to say, that his mouth hasn't gone sour from nerves.

He’s so caught up in how panicked he feels that he doesn’t realize Patty’s turned away from organizing his closet, has his full attention on Travis just in time to watch him have a full breakdown. With a strangled laugh, Travis recognizes the lump Patty’s holding: that fucking hoodie again, the same one from FaceTime and from getting breakfast together a billion times and lying side-by-side in hotel rooms watching whatever comes on TV. 

Travis scrubs his hands over his face. “You’ve gotta throw that thing out, man,” he says around another hysterical chuckle. 

“I— what?” Patty looks genuinely lost when Travis finally drops his hands.

“That hoodie. Every other time you wear it, you crack your phone screen.” Three, maybe four replacements in the last few months alone, more than Travis has ever replaced a single phone in his life. “The hole in the pocket’s gotta be big enough to climb through now.”

There’s the strangest expression on Patty’s face when he looks from Travis down to the jacket, a soft-edged wonder he usually saves for puppies (when he thinks no one’s looking) or whatever the stupidest tchotchke in any given gas station might be. The number of times Travis has watched him fork over real, actual money for a little statue of a dog skateboarding or a banana doing the hang-ten sign: immeasurable at this point. 

“I like it, too,” Patty says nonsensically, and Travis snorts.

“Yeah, bud, I figured that’s why you hadn’t thrown it away—”

Patty shakes his head, one quick hard negation before pinning Travis in place with his eyes, that screen-cracking look, that telepathy shit he does when he’s trying to will himself to cheating at cards on the plane. “Kissing,” Patty says. “I like kissing, a lot.”

Travis’ gut does a complicated attempt at sinking, settling for a nervous flip. “Pat—” he tries, because if Patty asks him outright to play-act a middle school camp makeout session—

“I think I’d like kissing you.” He’s holding this hoodie so tight his knuckles have gone pale. Travis has to focus on that instead of the way Patty’s looking at him, a goosebump-raising mix of fierce and uncertain. 

“For practice,” Travis clarifies, because it’s past time to ask questions about all this. His head jerks up at the sound of soft footsteps, and suddenly Patty’s right in front of him, holding that cursed fucking jacket right at Travis’ eye-level. 

Patty shakes his head again. Says, “No.”

Travis blinks, breathes, rides the wave of electricity buzzing up and down his spine. Says, “Oh,” sounding only about half as stupid as he feels. _ No? No. _

“Just to like...” Patty drops the hoodie into Travis’ lap, touches hesitant fingertips to Travis’ jaw, rests his thumbs soft in the hollow points of his cheeks. There is no way in the whole world Patty is looking at anything other than Travis’ mouth. “Just to try it.” 

“Oh,” Travis says again, head fully empty except for the way Patty’s watching him, curious, pupils pinpricked down so it’s nearly hard to find them in the unsettling blue-green of his eyes. “Okay.” 

When Patty’s eyes slip closed, the sweep of his eyelashes is so heavy Travis could swear he feels a breeze off it. Patty huffs out a little breath through his nose, the classic frustrated flare of his nostrils doing some Pavlov shit to Travis’ brain, stitching a grin right onto his face. He can practically hear Patty’s teeth grinding when he says, “‘_Okay’_, as in—?”

“Yes,” Travis clarifies, unable to keep the giddiness out of his voice. “Yeah, yes, please.” He must look like an entire goofy dumbass when Patty’s eyes pop open in surprise, but Patty doesn’t seem to care all that much. He kisses Travis anyway, big hands holding Travis’ face steady when he ducks in to press their lips together. 

Softer than Travis would’ve expected.

“It’s hard to kiss you when you’re smiling like a dweeb,” Patty mumbles against his mouth, and like, fair, but also—

“It’s hard to kiss you when you’re looming like a gargoyle.” Travis swallows down Patty’s disgruntled rebuttal, using the distraction to pull Patty down onto the bed. 

Because like, those things are what practice is for. 

* * *

_An Epilogue of Sorts_

Marathon kissing sessions aside, beard-burn bad enough to look like hives on Patty’s neck aside, Travis has some unanswered questions. He almost doesn’t want to ask, doesn’t want to break the awesome little bubble they’ve built in Patty’s room, bring in the outside world, but like— not asking questions was kind of the whole problem before, even if it managed to lead somewhere pretty cool. 

“So,” he starts, barreling into it before he can get freaked out, “we still need to get you train tickets for NYC?”

Patty could do anything— get pissy, get weird, leave. Instead, he snorts, rolling so his face is pressed to the mattress for a moment before peeking up at Travis from the corner of one narrowed eye. He's a little muffled when he says, “About that.”

Travis has no idea what he's going to say, still too blissed out to work up a conspiracy theory. He just watches curiously as Patty pulls out his phone and goes up on his elbows, thumbs jabbing around the screen in quick, practiced little movements. Usually, Travis ends up deleting more letters than he types correctly, so he's a mix of awed and disapproving at how easily Patty navigates. On the one hand, awesome job; on the other, probably means he's on his phone too much. 

“Here,” Patty says, shoving his phone over to Travis before burying his face in his crossed arms.

Travis vaguely recognizes the Instagram message layout, though it looks a little different from the last time he used it, whenever that was. 

“Am I about to see your nudes again?” Part suspicion, part hope. Travis is a complex little guy. 

Patty’s voice, irritation nearly muted by the sheets: “Just read, jackass.” 

One of Travis’ exes asked for an “open phone policy” which he hadn't really understood the appeal of. Even now, with Patty handing the phone over himself and demanding it, Travis feels weird about digging through his personal business, finding out the way Patty apparently talks to someone else when he's expecting it to be private. It makes Travis’ stomach knot uncomfortably but he wants to know what Patty wants him to know, so he sucks it up, skims through the conversation Patty opened up.

First impression: Patty’s Insta lady’s a bombshell and a half. Second impression: the way the back of Travis’ neck starts to flush as he reads, the way he can't keep his face straight for anything.

“I can't believe you told her you ‘found something closer to home’, bud. Way to burn that bridge.”

Patty rolls onto his back, shirt twisting uncomfortably around his middle as he glares up at Travis. “It sounded better in my head,” he snaps pissily, and then he gets that introspective look, pulling his phone away from Travis and staring at the conversation himself. “Besides, she took it really well.”

“Jeez, _ how? _ ” Travis didn't read past the bit Patty’d had open, didn't want to push any unspoken limits, but still- _ how? _

“She was really impressed with your eye for nudes, I guess. Asked if you'd do consultations for the other guys in her DM’s.” Patty looks quietly amused and mortified all at once, and Travis is startled into laughing, unable to wrap his head around anything. 

“She sounds incredible, bud.” Travis can't shake the wonderstruck little grin off his face. What a world.

“Yeah.” Patty clears his throat, tapping two fingers against Travis’ knee to get his attention. “You're pretty good, too.” 

It's hardly even a compliment, but Travis goes warm all over, flushed from his ears to his toes. Takes a page out of the Patty Playbook and shoves at him instead of saying anything back. He can't, honestly; feels like his cheeks’ll never be able to unbunch from this stupid manic grin, like the only way he can express anything he wants to say is to roll on top of Patty and knock his phone out of his hand, kiss him again because he can do it. 

Fast forward again, dopey as shit and loose to all fuck. 

Travis can't stop thinking about how much he’d _ thought _about Patty, about touching him, and how it's something he can do just casually now. He's got a hand down Patty’s shorts just to do it, just to finger at the velvety skin at the crook of his thigh and watch Patty’s face flush and tic as he pretends to ignore it while he scrolls through Spotify playlists. 

Travis yawns, surprised at how late it's gotten, at how comfy Patty’s shoulder is to lean against for a few hours at a time. “I think I’ve gotta get rid of all the home decor stuff my mom gave me.” 

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know, ask Beezer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to my aforementioned hand-holders!  
And thank you for reading! What a journey etc. etc. If you have any questions or complaints, feel free to ask in the comments or on twitter/tumblr! I know there are some things probably not addressed to the point of satisfaction (Ms. Insta), but I promise I've thought them through (probably)! Just not a good enough writer yet to interestingly and effectively tease them into the body of the actual fic lol  



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